We are not wizards
by LadyCrow
Summary: What would happen if four completely normal muggles were to gain magical powers after an accident. Off to Hogwarts they go! To make new friends... and enemies (Rating pg-13 mostly bcause of some swearing.)
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters you may recognise from the book. All of them belong to that wonderful writer J.K Rowlings. 

Dom, Nicolas, J.P and Anita are all real people that are really enjoying being in my story.

I have created any creature and person you don't recognise from the books.

This story takes place after the publishing of the prisoner of Azkaban, and after the showing of the seconf movie, TCoS

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Chapter one: A prank gone wrong.

London, England.

Four disgruntled looking teens were standing outside a cinema, discussing whether or not they would enter to see the movie. On the side of the cinema door was a large poster with the image of a young man with a lighting bolt scar across his forehead and the image of a humongeous snake behind him was announcing the newest Harry Potter movie, The Chamber of Secrets.. 

There were three boys and one girl, two of them arguing rather heatedly. As several people were passing by them and entering the cinema, most of them young children and teens.

The tallest one of them, a black haired young man with kind eyes, looking rather gangly and shy for his almost 6'6'' of height was trying to calm down the girl with chestnut braids and shining green eyes behind the crystal of her glasses that was waving her arms and almost growling at him.

The other two were standing by the entrance and watching the argument, one of them as a rather plump young man with a pair of glasses that was always sliding down his nose, his unruly curls were kept back in a pony tail. By him a cocky looking fellow was leaning against the wall, a rather big backpack was at his feet. He had sharp, almost eagle like features, and short black hair that was fixed in a spiky hairdo.

"You can't back out on us Nicolas! Come on.. you promised!

It will be fun!!"

The tall boy, who's name was apparently Nicolas shook his head slowly and muttered something in a rather low voice while avoiding to look the chestnut haired girl in the face.

"I said I would go to the movies with you lot, not that I would participate of this insane 'project' of yours. Besides someone could get seriously hurt... and knowing my luck that someone would be me.

Give it up Anita. I still don't know how you got J.P and Dom into this."

The black haired boy with the spiked hairdo smirked at Nicolas and chuckled slightly as he nudged the plump boy in the side, making him join the chuckle.

"Actually Nicolas, both me and J.P thinks its a damn good idea. This way we can get the fact that there is no such thing as witches and wizards into the tender little minds of the children you see entering there. 

I, we, believe that Anita is doing humanity a great service."

He made a military salute to Anita as she beamed at Dom, the black haired boy. J.P simply grinned at Nicolas, his nut brown eyes shining behind his glasses. It was clear he was absolutely decided to do this prank.

Anita looked up at Nicolas and smirked.

"Three votes against one, I do think we win mister Homsy. So we are doing this anyway.

And Dom, remember, its Crucio. Not Crucius."

Nicolas sighed and nodded, he had a really, REALLY bad feeling about this. 

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The movie went on without major disruptions, the children and some of the adults marvelled in the cinematographic retelling of the adventures of the boy that had been famous trough all the world in several children's books, Harry Potter.

Both J.P, Anita, Dom and Nicolas had read the books for school assignments and were rather fed up with the character and his adventures. So they had thought out a rather mean prank.

As the scene of Voldemort's return as Tom Riddle approached Dom opened his backpack and pulled out a heavy looking black cloak. As people around him were absorbed in the movie no-one noticed as he pulled the robe on and covered his face with a slightly green day gloo paint. In silence he pulled out a red glow stick from his backpack and hid it in the folds of his robe, waiting for the signal.

Several rows back both J.P and Anita were giggling with excitement, as Nicolas writhed in his chair. This was going to work out wrong, and he was certain he was going to get the worst part of it. It was always like that, his three friends somehow always managed to snake away from trouble leaving him behind to take all the blame. He watched the movie and realised that the zero hour was closing in rather too fast for his liking.

Anita was almost unable to stay still on her chair as she watched the movie screen. She remembered how Tom Riddle had lured Ginny into the depths of the chamber of secrets, and then revealed to Harry that he was really Voldemort she tensed up in her chair, whispering something to J.P who nodded and gave her a thumbs up.

As the movie screen was filled with the image of the basilisk following Tom Riddle's orders and attacking Harry. Dom took this as his quote and slowly got to his feet on the row closer to the screen. Barely managing to suppress her laughter Anita started screaming in a rather loud and almost hysterical voice while pointing at Dom.

"ITS VOLDEMORT! VOLDEMORT IS IN THE CINEMA!!!!"

As people heard her voice they started to look around, and there, standing shrouded in the black cloak and brandishing the red glow stick, stood Dom, his face eerily glowing in the darkness of the cinema.

Panic wouldn't be enough to describe what happened after that. Adults and children were screaming and running for the exits, screaming hysterically as they struggled to escape the supposingly dark mage that was hissing at them and throwing fake curses and hexes.

Anita and J.P were laughing so loud that they felt like their sides were about to split. So occupied they were that they failed to notice several people that has NOT fled from the cinema, people dressed in robes and that were holding wands, real wands.

"HALT THERE DARK LORD!"

A loud voice rang trough the now empty room as a red haired and rather bald man pointed a wand toward Dom, several other, including a woman that seemed to have multi coloured hair were starting to surround the cloaked Dom as he was still brandishing the glow stick.

Anita knew that something was wrong and started running toward her friend, only to be stopped by one of the cloaked men, preventing her to move forward.

"Stay here, we will make this short and finish him off immediately."

He said to her, this only making Anita struggle harder to make her way past the man. Fortunately for her J.P reached her and without even saying a word he lifted his fist and slammed it into the face of the cloaked man, rendering him quite unconscious. 

Nicolas was following close after, cursing and muttering under his breath as the ran after his two friends toward Dom.

Dom saw he was surrounded but managed to keep his head, he thought that these people were probably just fans that were so convinced of the existence of this Harry Potter that they actually believed him to be the dark lord. He decided to have some fun with them and spoke in a low and hissing voice.

"How do you dare to defy the Dark Lord?! I shall take revenge immediately on one of your precious muggles!"

He turned and pointed the glow stick at Anita and yelled out in a cavernous voice.

"CRUCIO!"

Anita followed Dom's thought and dropped to the floor, writhing and screaming loudly as in extreme pain. She was a good actress and knew she was giving a quite good performance. Just as Dom she was completely sure that he people dressed in robes were nothing more than fans of the supposed wizard, and she was really enjoying messing with them.

It was not before se saw the tip of one of their wands glowing softly in the darkness that she even suspected the truth. Getting up from the floor she suddenly realised that these strange people were really wizards! 

This couldn't be!

They would tear Dom to bits and pieces if they didn't intervene soon. She turned to J.P and Nicolas and saw in their eyes that they had realised the same as she did. With a loud cry all three of them ran towards Dom, ignoring the several hexes and curses that flew past them as they ran.

Dom was looking awfully scared as he also came to understand that these were not just ordinary fans. He saw his best friends rush toward him and felt six arms surrounding him at the same time as three different voice shouted out at the same time, lights of many colours covering all of the four friends.

"ACCLARO MAGUS!!!!

ADSUMO MACTUS!!!!

ABIGO MALUS!!!"

A incredible feeling of warmth bathed the four teens.... And then all went black.

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Spells:

Acclaro Magus = Reveal the wizard.

Adsumo Mactus = Summon Good

Abigo Malus = Banish Evil.


	2. What do you mean with magic?

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters you may recognise from the book. All of them belong to that wonderful writer J.K Rowlings. 

Dom, Nicolas, J.P and Anita are all real people that are really enjoying being in my story.

I have created any creature and person you don't recognise from the books.

This story takes place after the publishing of The Prisoner of Azkaban, and the release of the second Harry Potter movie.

Harry is in his fourth year at Hogwarts.

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Chapter one: What do you mean with magic???

The light... too bright... burned the eyes.

J.P felt like he was floating on a cushion of warm air, that he was slowly drifting in a place where time had no real meaning and where he had no care whatsoever. He was so content and happy with whatever had happened to him that he really didn't care about anything else than about continuing floating.

But slowly voices started piercing trough his perfect little world of nothingness and calm, voices saying words that he found somewhat familiar but that didn't relate to him at all.

He struggled for a long time to manage to open his eyes, he could see a white ceiling, white sheets, white clothed people.

J.P groaned.

If there was something he really hated it was being in a hospital, and this place had all the aspect of being some kind of hospital wing. But there was something odd about it. He didn't feel the smell of antibiotics nor other medicaments.

Ever so slowly he sat up in his bed and lifted a hand to run it trough his curls. The last thing he remembered was going to the cinema, and some strange people and...a strong...light.

His eyes snapped wide open, where was Dom and Nicolas, and...Anita.

Looking around he waved toward one of the nurses that finally noticed him and walked over with a quite stern look.

"Ah, so you are awake mister Mailhot, you have been out could for almost a week, we were afraid that you would never wake up."

J.P shook his head slowly, how did she know his name? Had she searched his wallet or something?

He tried to speak but his mouth felt like he had been keeping cotton stuffed there for the least.. A WEEK?!

"Whatcha... no.. it can't be.. Dom... Nicolas... Anita... Where?"

He tried to get to his feet but soon discovered that his leg had decided to take a rather long rest, he couldn't hold his footing and nearly crashed to the floor. The nurse rushing to his side and holding on to him to keep him from falling. Her voice was even more stern as she once more pushed him onto the bed.

"They are all fine, they all woke up a few hours ago. Even mister Homsy is up and around. I must say he was unlucky, he was hit by several hexes. And according to the Auror's that brought you in none of them was aimed for him."

J.P smiled weakly as he slowly laid down on his bed again, feeling that floating sensation grab hold of him once more. He managed to mutter a few words to the nurse before falling asleep.

"That is our Nicolas, always with the Dark Destiny following him."

Then he wasn't able to say anything more as he drifted off to the cosy place of nothingness where he had been floating for the last seven days.

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The day after the four friends were allowed to share the same hospital room. They didn't know much more about where they were, the nurses and doctors seemed reluctant to tell them anything else than the fact that they had been in a coma for several days.

The mood was quite gloomy as the quartet realised that they were not allowed to leave the hospital room, as two rather mean looking men were standing guard outside the door.

Dom and Nicolas were passing the time playing cards with J.P (who was loosing spectacularly), while Anita was walking from one side of the room to the other, talking to herself. A habit that both Dom, Nicolas and J.P knew of and that stopped disturbing them a long time ago, now it was simply just a background sound than anything else.

"I can't remember, I simply can't. But know something is wrong, can't put my finger on it. Something with the cinema. I can't even remember what happend there.. Can you, guys?"

The three young men shook their head without even interrupting their poker game. They were playing for pieces of chocolate, something that the nurses seemed to feed them in abundance.

Anita just sighed and resumed her pacing trough the room, her long ponytail bouncing off her back as she continued muttering to herself.

"Trapped like animals, that is what we are. I want to get out... I want to get out.. I WANT TO GET OUT!"

And suddenly.. she was out.

Anita looked down and realised that somehow she had been transported to the ledge outside their room, a few meters from the closed window, she waved her arms to keep balance as she screamed out quite loudly and scaring away the pigeons.

"HOW THE HELL DID I GET HERE?!"

All three boy jumped to their feet as Anita disappeared with a loud crack, as if a large bullwhip had been used to whip the floor. All of a sudden she was gone, and all they could hear was her screams. What had happened? 

The loud screams of the woman attracted the two guards that burst trough the door to come to the aid of Anita. One of them opened the window and looked out to find Anita barely holding on to the brick wall with her fingers. He shook his head slightly and muttered something to the other man. 

The one inside the room pulled out a wand and aimed it at the scared girl on the ledge. The other one holding his arms open as if t grab something.

Before the boys could react to this strange behaviour, the man with the wand called out a loud word.

"ACCIO ANITA!"

Anita felt like something pulled her away from the wall and almost threw her into the waiting arms of the man by the window. She was trembling all over and still confused as to what had happened. How had she ended up on that ledge? She was relieved nevertheless when the two men placed her on the floor and walked out of the room.

The three boys were too dumbfounded to actually realise what had happened, and as they placed their friend Anita in the middle room they didn't even manage to say they were glad for her to be safe.

In fact all four of the young teens were so amazed and scared about what had happened that they didn't even notice a tall old man with a impressively long silver beard that had walked into the room and was looking at them with a deep expression of concern and amusement.

"Ahem.. Gentlemen, and lady. I do believe it is time we had a little chat.

If you could please sit down I do believe we can answer any question you may have."

Albus Dumbledore couldn't help but smile as four pair of eyes finally noticed him and locked on his face, as if searching to read any answer of his wrinkles.

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Anita, Dom, Nicolas and J.P were all staring at the old man in front of them, what he had just told them sounded like something out of a fairy tale. 

He had explained it several times already, that the people that were in the theatre and that had surrounded them were Auror's. That the warm sensation they had felt in their bodies was actually streams of magical powers, surging trough their bodies and filling them to the brim with magic

With the result that now all of the four teens had the same magical powers as any wizard and witch of their age.

Dumbledore chuckled softly, his blue eyes sparkling as he looked toward the quartet..

"Of course the Auror's had no idea that the mix of their curses and hexes would produce such a ... interesting result.

I suppose you wish to know what we shall do now that you four have stopped being muggles and become wizards, and witch. I would suggest that all four of you come to Hogwarts and start your studies immediately, I shall also arrange for you to have extra classes so you can reach the level of the other students as soon as possible.

That of course after we make a stop at Diagon Alley and get you your school supplies."

Nicolas was the first to actually manage to say something, even when he had to start over several times as his voice simply refused to come out as anything else than a small squeak. He cleared his throat for he fifth time and finally managed to speak you the old wizard sitting in front of them.

"What do you mean with magic? Magic like in those Harry Potter books by this Rowling woman?

You got to be kidding us."

Dumbledore smiled kindly and shook his head, slowly he got up and walked until he stood in front of the window. He folded his hands behind his back and stayed silent for a few moments, giving the teens time to let the idea sink in.

The next one to speak was Anita, but unlike Nicolas she didn't stutter, she simply jumped to her feet and started waving her hands around as she spoke in a fast and quite loud voice.

"Who are you trying to fool? Those are just BOOKS, there is no such thing as wizards and witches and unicorns and whatsoever. And you can't possibly be the real Dubledore.

I know that the prank we did in the cinema was a bit too much, we have learned our lesson now.. can we please go home?"

Dumbledre sighed and turned to look at the quartet, his blue eyes catching Anita's green ones in a almost entrancing gaze as he spoke once more, his voice more severe than usual.

"Sometimes, miss Salinas, the best way to hide something is by keeping it in plain sight. The books and movies are nothing more than decoys to normal muggles, keeping them for asking too many questions about certain events. It is incredible what kind of blunders you can masquerade as a promotional strategy. 

It is also a mean of keeping Voldemort's spies at bay and tell the rest of the wizard world what has happened with Harry during the year.

I assure you that most of what is in the books have indeed happened and that the movies are very loosely based on true facts and events.

Of course some things have been changed. Also most of the books have been charmed with a powerful Conturbatio charm, meaning that whenever a wizard or witch of any kind reads the books the facts that could carry any importance for Voldemort disappear, the pages being filled with nonessential information."

Dom slowly got out of his chair and looked at the old wizard, his dark eyes filled with amusement, he nodded at J.P that seemed to agree with whatever thought was in the head of the spiky haired teen.

"You know, that is bloody brilliant!

If anyone actually sees anyone making magic in the streets they will think its only a promotional trick about the books, what a way to think!"

J.P was the last one to speak, and when he did his voice was low and measured, he seemed to be the most laid back and calm of the quartet. That, and the fact that he had started growing a beard, made him seem older and more mature than his other three friends.

"I do have to ask this. Does our parents know? And if they don't.. who is going to pay for all our school supplies and for our expenses during the school year?"

Dumbledore looked at the plump young man and smiled.

"All your parents know is that you have been accepted to one of the most prestigious schools in all England with all expenses paid. Slowly we will let them know what happened to you and why you have to stay here.

As for the costs..."

The old wizard chuckled and moved to the door and opened it, letting a balding and nervous looking man approach each of the teens and handing them a rather heavy cloth bag before walking back to stand by Dumbledore and speaking in a low voice, it was very clear that he was feeling uncomfortable.

"I am Cornelius Fudge, and I am the current minister of magic.

Unfortunately for both you and for us, Saint Mungo's best healers have been unable to find any way to revert the effect the several spells and hexes had on you. 

Since we can't have four muggles running around with wizard powers we have decided to pay all your costs for school and start your training.

Besides we believe that if You-Know-Who managed to get his hands on you four he would be more than happy to torture you and then kill you.

Dumbledore will escort you to Diagon Alley where you will be able to buy all your school supplies, no cost for you ofcourse, before we ship you all to Hogwarts. 

Those bags I gave you each contains around 500 galleons, you will be given one such bag a year, so I suggest you use them wisely.

We at the Ministry apologises any inconveniences this particular event may have caused you all.

Have a good day"

With these words the small bald man made his way out of the hospital room, leaving the four teen staring at the bags of money in their hands, feeling incredibly rich.

Slowly they understood that this was no crazy dream, that they were really wizards and that they would soon got to a school where even the wildest dreams could come true.

Anita and Dom where the first two to speak, both of them grinning at Dumbledore as they spoke almost in unison.

"Well what are we waiting for?

Lets go SHOPPING!"

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End of the second chapter, I do hope you all like what I have up so far, I am really inspired and pretty sure that chapter 3 will be up soon.

Any reviews and suggestions are accepted.

Thank you for reading ^.^


	3. Diagon Alley Madness

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters you may recognise from the book. All of them belong to that wonderful writer J.K Rowlings. 

Dom, Nicolas, J.P and Anita are all real people that are really enjoying being in my story.

I have created any creature and person you don't recognise from the books.

This story takes place after the publishing of The Prisoner of Azkaban, and the release of the second Harry Potter movie.

Harry is in his fourth year at Hogwarts.

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Chapter three: Diagon Alley Madness!

"Oh look a that sinister looking guy! Could I look like that?"

"How do you think I would look in those robes? Well, yellow isn't really my colour."

"Where is the Magic Menagerie, where are the animals?!!"

"Jeebus Cripes.. Is that a real nose? And I thought yours was bad, Dom."

Those were the cries that filled the air around Dumbledore as he first guided the quartet of newly made wizards into the Diagon Alley, the old wizard shook his head as he looked at the eager teens. He had almost forgotten that they were not born wizards and that only a few days ago they had been simple muggles visiting England for the first time and pulling a prank in a cinema.

He had spoke with all four of them, trying to get to know them a bit better in the following 3 days after they had been informed they were now endowed with magical powers. He was glad when he realised that all four of them were quite the unusual lot, unlike most muggles he had met.

Jean Phillipe, or J.P as all his three friends called him, was a level headed young man. He had a dry sense of humour and a insight about life that was unusual to find in such a young man. Dumbledore suspected he had seen quite a bit more than a normal 15 year old should have seen. He found that the plump young man somehow reminded him of Hagrid, but without the love for dangerous beasts. Instead J.P seemed to hold a rather unsettling love for swords and daggers of all kinds.

Dominic, or Dom, was a quite interesting character, histrionic and self loving to a point of extreme egocentrism, but without becoming annoying. He was a fun loving young man, always quick to throw a joke or two given the right occasion. Dumbledore had also come to realise that he was quite a gifted artist after Dom showed him some of his drawings. 

Ana Maria, who everybody called Anita, was a head strong, stubborn, loud speaking and charming young lady. She had quite a quick wit and it was not strange to find her exchanging jokes with Dom. He had also learned that she had quite the explosive temper, being able to scare away both Dom and Nicolas with one of her hard scowls, however J.P didn't seem at all affected by her swinging moods and was always the first one to step in and calm her down when she was going on a rage rampage. 

There was something strange about her, as if she was holding a secret deep within her, something she insisted to keep hidden from all her friends, even from J.P that seemed to be the one closest to her.

Then there was Nicolas, a young man that seemed too tall for his age, he stood quite high over all his friends, but somehow he seemed to be the less secure and independent of all of them. J.P had mentioned something about a Dark Destiny following Nicolas around. And after three days of constantly visiting the teens Dumbledore understood why. It seemed that bad luck was attracted to Nicolas. Things were always making him trip, doorways seemed to shrink when he passed trough them, always making him slam his head into the doorframe. But despite this strange wave of bad luck that seemed to follow him everywhere Nicolas was a kind and gentle soul, always there for his friends when they needed him.

But now all four of them were busy marvelling over the many shops they saw in the Alley, Dumbledore checked his magical pocket watch and tapped his foot. 

Where was he? He was late.

'He' appeared out of the Leaky Cauldron just as Dumbledore finished his thought. A wizard in ragged robes and a apologetic smile on his face walked over to the elder wizard, running a hand trough his sandy brown locks touched with silver.

"I'm sorry I am late Professor. I got stopped by several wizards on the way that started asking me unpleasant questions about werewolves. Fortunately I managed to shake them off....I hope."

Dumbledore smiled to Remus Lupin as the man looked after him as if expecting a angry mob to burst trough the back wall of the Leaky Cauldron and lynch him. It seemed that the news of him being a werewolf had spread even faster than expected. The former teacher looked tired and hollow eyed, as if he had not slept for several days. Dumbledore put his hand on the shoulder of Lupin and pointed at the group of teens that were all plastered to the window of the cauldron shop, mesmerised by the sight of a self-stirring cauldron.

The older wizard handed Lupin a piece of parchment with many scrawls, a shimmering silver card with a rather official seal on it and then smiled..

"Those four there need to be showed around the Alley, here is the list with things they will need, don't worry about the cost, the Ministry will pay everything, just show the shop owners the card. 

Please be patient with them, this is their first day our of St. Mungo's. And be careful with Anita and Dom, they seem a bit too eager for their own good, if you understand me. Somehow they remind me of another group of people I knew many years ago.

Well now, I must return to Hogwarts and prepare the start of the school year."

Dumbledore smiled at Remus before dissaparating with a loud 'crack!'.

Remus shook his head slightly before turning to look at the four teens. So they were the muggles that had been caught in the curses of four Aurors and actually survived it. 

He smiled slightly, not only had they survived, but the combination of the spells somehow triggered a change in them, making them adept to magic. He supposed that far back in their family there must have been a witch or a wizard of some sort, the latent magical blood being triggered by the scourge of magic.

So now they were all wizards, of magical blood and powers, and he had to look after them.

Sighing he walked over to the girl and placed a hand quite gently on her shoulder.

She turned around and nudged one of the boys. Soon all four of them were looking expectantly at him.

"Well then, a pleasure to meet you all. My name is Remus Lupin.

Since Professor Dumbledore has many important matters to attend to I will be the one helping you out with your school implements and opening accounts at Gringotts.

So.. any questions?"

The four teens were still staring at him, and that was making him rather uncomfortable, he felt like they were inspecting him from head to toe, and suddenly he felt rather self conscious about his ragged robe and his unruly hair. He quickly ran a hand trough his hair trying to make it lie down a bit more in order.

The first one to speak was J.P, taking a step towards Remus and looking at him rather critically.

"Are you THE Remus Lupin, you know.. the werewolf?"

Remus sighed slightly, so they also knew. He wondered if there wee actually someone that DIDN'T know about his problem. Slowly he nodded at J.P, looking quite ashamed of himself.

"Well.. I suppose I am"

Suddenly all four teens started talking quite enthusiastically, their words flowing so fast that he hardly managed to understand anything of what they were actually saying, but he managed to distinguish a few words among the torrent of phrases.

'Best DADA teacher EVER!' 

'Do we get classes with you?' 

'That Draco was a swine for turning you in.'

For the first time since he had been forced to leave Hogwarts Remus felt happy and proud of himself.

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The first thing they had to do was start a saving account in Gringotts. The four teens were amazed when they first saw the goblins that ran the bank. Anita and Dom were silent just ogling at the small magical creatures until they actually got told off by several of them. 

Nicolas actually managed to trip over one of the goblins almost falling face first into the ground. He was saved by the fast intervention of J.P that managed to grab his tall friend before he made a close encounter with the marble floor.

Lupin apologised profusely to the goblin while Nicolas was only able to stare into the floor, a shade of crimson covering his cheeks.

After a few moments of transactions and writing down names four new vaults of Gringotts had new owners and each of them had a account of 450 galleons in it.

Anita was holding her key and comparing it to the one of the other three friends, she was puzzled when she saw that the numbers on they keys were not consecutive despite all four of them opening their accounts at the same time. She seemed confused and walked over to Lupin to ask him about this.

"Why is it that all our keys have different numbers? I mean Dom has number 135, I have number 228, J.P has number 508 and Nicolas has number 132. Is there any special reason for this?"

Remus seemed slightly confused by her question, he had never thought of it before so he really didn't have any answer. But the answer came indeed, from the same goblin Nicolas had tripped over.

"We re use the vaults that no longer have any owners, inactive vaults without any money. We also give new vaults out from time to time, but there are always plenty of vaults available... and even more now in these dark times."

The goblin went silent and scurried away from the small group. The teens pondered for a moment on what he could have meant, but then realisation hit them. Whole families were killed or disappeared now that Voldemort was slowly returning to the wizarding world.

They left the bank in a slightly less cheerful mood than they had been when they entered. 

But soon enough they cheered up, they had plenty of things to see and discover yet.

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Soon each of the teens were carrying their own cauldrons and potion ingredients, they had all bought the books that they needed, and even some that they didn't really need but insisted on buying as they wanted to learn more about the world of magic they were now a part of. 

The only one of them hat entered the Owl Emporium was J.P, he insisted on wanting to have a own owl, the others thought this was ridiculous... after all who could they write to.

But after a few moments J.P emerged from the shop looking quite happy with a large cage that contained a eagle owl, its eyes closed against the bright daylight.

At Madame Malkin they had all got the traditional school robes and some school uniforms. But as she asked them from what houses they were only the fast intervention of Lupin kept them from blurting out with the truth. The had not the faintest idea what house they were going to be in.

As they passed the Magical Menagerie Anita almost dragged them into the shop, J.P deciding to stay outside with Lupin as the noise from the many animals were unsettling his owl.

Inside the shop Nicolas, Dom and Anita were looking around for that perfect pet.

Dom couldn't picture himself with any of the critters in the shop until he saw the cage of sleek black rats on the counter. Something about those small beady eyes and the shiny black fur captivated him and he decided to buy one. He looked into the cage and saw one that he liked, but differently to the others this one was not entirely black. It had a large blotch of white just covering most of its back, it was as if someone had dropped a large drop of paint on the poor animal. Dom nodded to the tender and handed her two sickles to pay for the rat that he immediately placed on his shoulder. The rat sniffed at his neck once or twice and decided that it liked its new owner and settled down.

As Nicolas was looking trough the cages something large and furry jumped at him., a pitch black cat had climbed up on his shoulder and was sitting rubbing its head against Nicolas, its long whiskers tickling his face.

"Oh no.. If I buy you I´ll just have even worse luck. Your kind bring bad luck"

He said to the cat as he slowly lifted a hand to grab it and pull it off his shoulder. The cat started purring and rubbed its hand against Nicolas' raised hand, a small and rough tongue licking over his fingers. The tall boy sighed and gave up. He supposed he couldn't be more unlucky that what he already was. He paid the shop keeper and waited for Anita.

Anita was having quite a hard time, she simply couldn't decide what animal she should choose. The rats were charming, but the cats were so beautiful. Even that rabbit that kept turning itself into a top hat was cute. She shook her head and looked around the room again. Suddenly she noticed a small cage close to the counter where something quite similar to a Jack Russell terrier was barking at her.

Intrigued she crouched in front of the cage and spoke softly to the small dog. A first it simply continued growling and barking at her, as if something about her disliked it. But she continued speaking to it quite softly. The small dog cocked its head and listened to her, it stopped barking and growling and instead sniffed eagerly at the hand she held out to it. After a few seconds it started whining softly, a forked tail suddenly started wagging so hard it was hitting against the sides of the cage it was in.

"What sort of creature are you, huh? You so cute... You want to come with me, yes?"

She spoke to the dog, making its tail wag even more. Anita took that as a affirmative answer and looked at the shop owner, nodding at the witch behind the counter. The stocky witch opened the cage and a whirlwind of fur with a forked tail stormed out of the cage and into Anita's waiting arms, trying as much as it could to lick her in the face. She stood up still with the happy dog like creature in her arms. The heavy witch smiled at Anita as she received the 5 sickles that the small creature cost.

"You are lucky, that crup has been here quite a while, he seems to be right picky with his owners. I am glad he liked you thou."

As the three teens came out of the Menagerie Remus pointed at a rather obscure looking shop almost at the end of Diagon Alley. A old and worn sign read 'Ollivander's Fine Wands'. As he spoke he was smiling widely to the four teens.

"I think we should go there now, after all this is the first time you will ever have a wand in your hands."

Anita, Dom, Nicolas and J.P all walked eagerly towards the shop, eager to know what kind of wand they would have.

------------------------------------------------------ o ------------------------------------------------------------

End third chapter.

Ahh I am really inspired, three chapters in only one day.. 

To those people that have left reviews....THANK YOU A LOT!

Expect a new chapter soon. Reeeeally soon.


	4. Wands and King's Cross

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters you may recognise from the book. All of them belong to that wonderful writer J.K Rowlings. 

Dom, Nicolas, J.P and Anita are all real people that are really enjoying being in my story.

I have created any creature and person you don't recognise from the books.

This story takes place after the publishing of The Prisoner of Azkaban, and the release of the second Harry Potter movie.

Harry is in his fourth year at Hogwarts.

---------------------------------- o ------------------------------------------

****

Chapter four: Wands and King's Cross.

The shop was dark and seemingly empty as the for teens accompanied by Remus Lupin entered it. Rows and rows of boxes covered almost all the walls, from floor to roof. The counter was dusty as if no one had been there for ages. 

J.P was looking at the single wand in the window with mild interest as Nicolas stayed completely still, there were too many things here he could stumble over or walk into, he didn't want to break anything anyway.

Anita and Dom were discussing what kind of wand they would get, Dom claimed he would get a better wand than Anita, while she claimed he would only get a wand good for making silly charms and such while she would get a excellent wand for hexes.

Their bickering was interrupted by a positively ancient looking man.

"Well, well, well. So here they are. The four muggles that, by a twist of fortune, have joined our ranks. Interesting, mostly interesting.

Ahh... A pleasure to see you once more Mister Lupin. Maple, 13 1/2 inches, Unicorn hair, whippy. Am I right"

Remus nodded and smiled at the old man, how he managed to remember each and every wand he had sold was a mystery. But right now he had more important things to worry about than mysteries. He placed a hand on Nicolas' back and pushed him forwards.

"A pleasure to see you again Mister Ollivander, I do believe you know what to do."

Ollivander nodded and smiled at Nicolas that could only watch nervously as the magical measuring tape started flying around him, measuring everything, from the length of his wand arm to the length of his large feet. Ollivander nodded and rubbed is hands as he went and brought back a elongated box, opening it and handing a wand to Nicolas.

"Try this one. Ebony, 12.5 inches, unicorn hair, pliable."

Nicolas lifted his arm as to swish the wand but he didn't complete the movement before Ollivander snapped it out of his hand and handed him another.

"No, no, no... that won't do. Now this one. Holly, 11 inches, phoenix feather, swishy."

Nicola did the same, lifted his arm. But this time he came only halfway before the wand was pulled away from him and replaced it with another.

This happened several times, the poor mister Ollivander starting to grow desperate. It couldn't be that he had a client to whom he couldn't find the correct wand. A small mountain of boxes were already piling on one side of the counter.

But finally he pulled out a box that he had kept hidden under the counter and gently took out the wand before handing it to Nicolas.

"Well. I never thought I would hand out this wand, but its worth a try. 14 inches, cedar, thestral hair, inflexible."

Even before he had lifted the wand Nicolas could feel the warmth that ran trough his arm. Yellow and silver sparks emerging from the tip of the wand.

Ollivander smiled slightly and rubbed his chin. He didn't want to startle the young students so he kept his peace about the wand. But this had proved to be very....interesting.

------------------------------------ o ------------------------------------

A few moments later all the teens were heading out from the shop, each one of them with a new wand in their hands. 

J.P was proudly running his fingers over his wand, a inflexible, 11.5 inches oak wand with a core of dragon heartstring. He was eager to try out his wand, and if it depended on him, he would have stated casting spells immediately, but a warning glance from Lupin had been enough to stop him.

Anita was looking quite happy with her own wand, according to Ollivander it was 12 inches, walnut, slightly springy with a core of unicorn hair. She chuckled inwardly, nobody knew how much that actually fit her.

Dom had protested slightly when he received his wand, but as he felt the warmth running trough his arm he gave a damn about the composition of his wand. Which was 11 inches, cherry tree, a siren hair core and rather bendy. Ok, so it was a corny combination... so what? He could still cast spells with it.

Nicolas was looking at his own wand, he knew there was something unusual about it, but had not dared to ask mister Ollivander about it. Maybe he was just over reacting. The warm feeling of his cat as it rubbed against his neck was comforting, and he noticed he hadn't stumbled or walked into something for quite a while. Maybe his luck was changing after all.

Lupin lead them back to towards the Leaky Cauldron. He had explained that since the Hogwarts express was leaving tomorrow they would spend the night at the tavern. Tom had already been given orders about their stay and were expecting them.

As they passed by Quality Quidditch Supplies none of the boys seemed too interested in the several brooms in the window. But Anita couldn't help but admire the brand new Firebolt that was on display. She bit her lower lip and pondered. There were still plenty of galleons in her vault after all. And she still had around 44 galleons left after she bought her crup and some delicious ice-cream at Florean Fortesque. She looked at the boys that were already leaving and decided to do it. If she was going to fly she would better buy a broom.

As she entered the shop she immediately walked over to the counter and pointed at the window. 

"How much does that Firebolt cost?"

The tender seemed rather confused as the young girl busted into his chop followed by a small crup that was barking at her ankles. It took him a moment to realise what she had just said, a sad smile coming to his lips as she spoke, he had seen so many disappointed faces since he had placed that broom in the window, he didn't feel like disappointing another young witch, but nevertheless he told her.

"It cost 100 galleons little miss." 

Anita did indeed seem quite disappointed as he sad the price. She knew that she, and the rest of the guys, would only receive 500 galleons each year, and maybe they would need them later. She sighed and headed toward the door.

The tender's hear ached as he saw her shoulders slumped like so, there was something about her that called out to him and made him feel bad about making her sad. He looked around the store and his eyes fell on the new brooms he had received just last week. They were from a small company, almost unknown one would say. During the whole week he had not managed to sell a single of the brooms. He pondered a moment before calling Anita back just as she was about to leave the shop.

"Hey miss. I got this offer to make you. I got this unknown brand of brooms. To be honest I didn't even know the company existed anymore, the last thing they actually made was the Silver Arrow way back there. I know it may not be as fabulous as the Firebolt, but maybe you should give it a try. They are called WhirlWind."

He took out one of the aforementioned brooms and handed it to Anita. The handle was of polished ash and seemed to be both soft and smooth to the touch. Close to the end of the handle the engraving of the name of the broom could be seen, two large intertwined 'W' followed by smaller characters that spelled out the complete name of the mark. Anita smiled as she slowly ran her hand over the polished surface, but there was still doubt in her eyes as she asked the price. The tender smiled, and for some odd reason felt really generous.

"I´ll tell you what. You give me 30 galleons and I´ll throw in the broom cleaning kit, just for you little miss."

Anita smiled widely, her green eyes positively shining with joy as she dug her hand into her pocket and pulled out 30 shining pieces of gold and placed them on the counter. She bit her lip slightly as he handed her the cleaning kit and the broom, and before the tender knew what was going on she had given him a swift hug and grabbed her things only to dance out the door of the shop, singing merrily.

"Well isn't she a nice girl."

The tender said as he placed the golden coins into the register, a slight smile still on his lips.

----------------------------------------------- o --------------------------------------------

"So what are you going to name yours?"

The quartet was sitting at their table in the Leaky Cauldron. After many hours of simply observing the people that were moving in and out of the pub they had grown weary and were now speaking about their new pets. Anita had brought her book about '_Notable Magical Names of Our Time_' and was slowly leafing trough it trying to find a name for her crup. J.P was pondering whether to call his owl a muggle name or a wizard name. Nicolas was trying to remember the word for Luck in latin, as that was what he wanted to name his cat. Dom was also pondering how to name his rat, that in those moments had curled up inside his T-shirt and was sleeping calmly.

"Um.. I think luck is Fortuna or something, but I'm not sure."

Anita said diverting her eyes from the book for a moment as she tried to answer Nicolas' question. She looked over at J.P and Dom that both shrugged and returned to their own pondering. Nicolas thought about it for a moment and then a smile came to his lips.

"Fortuna... I think I like that name. Now I just hope it is a she.. if not I would have to change its name later."

So one pet was down and three more were to go. The small crup was sleeping under the table along with the now named Fortuna, he didn't seem to mind the feline even when dogs and cats were supposed to be deadly enemies... maybe it was because he was a crup, and not a dog.

Suddenly Anita slammed the book close with a wide smile on her lips, it appeared she had already found a name for her four-legged companion. Bowing down and looking under the table she spoke to the small crup.

"Hey cutie.. what do you think about Devlin as a name? You are after all a quite a cute little devil."

The forked tail of the now named Devlin started thumping against the floor as a sign of agreement. Anita laughed happily and turned to Dom and J.P, the only ones that had not yet named their pets.

But not for long as Dom started chuckling and pawing at his stomach, the rat having woken up and was sniffling at his master, tickling him with his long whiskers. Dom struggled and managed to get the small rodent out of his clothes and while smiling at it he named it

"Oddball!"

This attracted the eyes of all of his friends who seemed to ponder about the name for a moment before returning to their own business. So now there was only the large eagle owl of J.P that didn't have any name. The nut brown eyes of the teen seemed to be staring trough the wall as he pondered over and over on how to name his owl. Exasperated he asked Anita to borrow him the book on magical names and opened a page at random, letting his finger follow the lines of the page until they stopped.

"So his name will be...."

He read the page and smiled. His luck had not abandoned him. For the name under his finger was the name of one of the greatest wizards of all time.

"...Merlin."

---------------------------------------------- o -------------------------------------------------------

The night passed without any incidents and early next morning Lupin came to pick up the still sleepy teens. The one looking worst for the wear was J.P, his hair was standing up like he was some insane genius like this Instone guy, that muggle guy that invented time or something like that. Besides he seemed unable to articulate any sound that wasn't something quite similar to a growl.

Lupin was worried someone had cast a sleeping charm on him but the other three teens assured him that J.P was always like that in the mornings and he just needed some time to return to the world of the living. Anita made a rather witty comment about a dynamite having to explode to actually wake J.P up, making Dom and Nicolas laugh rather loudly. Lupin laughed along with them, wishing he knew what a dynamite was.

Lupin led them out of the Leaky Cauldron along with their trunks and their pets. He looked around to make sure no muggle was paying attention and lifted his right hand.

With a loud 'BANG' a three floored purple buss with the golden writing "Knight Buss" appeared in front of the small group. The four teens jumped back at the violent sound but soon noticed by Lupin's demeanor that there was nothing to fear. 

A tall and rather gangly young man with pimples and glasses jumped down from the buss and started loading their trunks into the large vehicle all while chattering like a parakeet to the elderly driver of the buss.

Lupin nodded to the quartet and strode about of the buss. The teens didn't wait for long before climbing aboard of the strange transport. Nicolas, as usual, managed to bang his head against the top of the door as he walked up the steps.

Lupin walked over to the driver and greeted him in a rather familiar way and handed him several silver coins while grasping the pole by him rather hard with his free hand.

"Good morning Ernie. 

We are headed for King's Cross Station, I do believe that would make around 15 sickles for all of us."

The man named Ernie returned the greeting as the doors of the buss slammed closed and the large vehicle started moving, causing Nicolas and J.P to both fall down the middle hall of the buss, rolling until they reached the back. Anita and Dom somehow managed to hold on to the brass bedstead of one of the many beds that seemed to be there instead of regular seats.

The tall young man walked over to Nicolas and J.P and helped them up from the floor, all while the buss swerved from side to side, seemingly avoiding pedestrians, buildings and other obstacles with incredible ease.

"First time on the night buss no? I thought so.

My name is Stan, pleased to meet you. I do suggest you take a seat on the beds, besides we will be at the station in no time."

As he spoke he pulled Nicolas and J.P off the floor and helped them take a seat on one of the several beds. Both of the teens looking rather confused about this strange vehicle.

Soon enough they arrived at King's Cross and got off the buss. Lupin got them some trolleys where they loaded all their luggage and the cage with Merlin that was sleeping soundly.

As the four teens already knew from reading the books the entrance was at platform 9 ¾, but it still took them quite a bit of courage to walk straight into the brick wall without hesitating. Nicolas was almost completely sure that he wouldn't make it trough and had to be convince by Lupin to actually push is trolley across the barrier between platform 9 and 10.

Soon all of them were standing in front of the red steam engine that seemed quite ready to leave the station, there were people everywhere, witches and wizards alike. The four teens couldn't believe their eyes as they actually saw the real Harry Potter in company with Ron and Hermione approach Lupin and the quartet.

Harry looked over the four teens that seemed to be his same age than him, except the plum teen with glasses and curly hair, that apparently was starting to grow a beard.

Ron and Hermione waved to the quartet that quite shyly waved back.

"Hello Professor Lupin. What are you doing her? Don't tell us The Ministry has changed their mind about you being too dangerous to be a teacher?"

Harry was speaking to the teacher and really hoping that the answer would be yes, not paying much attention to the quartet.

Hermione and Ron were discussing in a low voice about the four teens, apparently students of Hogwarts, but none of them had a house badge or tie of any sort. Besides they did look awfully confused and puzzled. Besides, both of them were sure that they had never seen those students before.

Lupin only had time to shake his head in response to Harry's questions before the whistle of the train announced that it would be leaving the station soon. Harry, Hermione and Ron waved good bye to Lupin and ran off to get a empty booth.

Lupin turned to the quartet and smiled slightly before turning away and leading them into the train and a booth that seemed to be empty by art of magic.

The train blew its whistle once more before starting to move, first slowly, then faster, out of the station.

In a few hours they would be at Hogwarts.

----------------------------------------------- o ------------------------------------------------------

End chapter four.

Now a bit of explanations.

None of the quartet knows about the Qudditich tournament, the fourth book had not yet been published by the time they did their little prank in the theatre, so they couldn't possibly know anything about it.

The WhirlWind is my own little creation and will be described in more depth later in the story.

As for the crup.. I know you need a special licence to own one and that the tail must be docked.. so don't despair, there will be more information on that later.

And we'll see what happens to our friends during the sorting ceremony ;)

Thanks for all the nice reviews and I promise I´ll try to keep up the rhythm.


	5. Hogwarts Express and Sorting

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters you may recognise from the book. All of them belong to that wonderful writer J.K Rowlings. 

Dom, Nicolas, J.P and Anita are all real people that are really enjoying being in my story.

I have created any creature and person you don't recognise from the books.

This story takes place after the publishing of The Prisoner of Azkaban, and the release of the second Harry Potter movie.

Harry is in his fourth year at Hogwarts.

---------------------------------- o ------------------------------------------

****

Chapter five: Hogwarts Express and Sorting.

The compartment was empty indeed and soon the quartet and Lupin had settled into their seats, J.P taking a seat on one of their trunks as there was not enough space for all of them on the seats.

They started speaking rather excitedly about everything they had seen during their shopping trip in Diagon Alley and commenting on Anita's new broom. Lupin had to admit that he didn't know much about brooms since he had never been a great fan of Quidditch and had never owned enough money to buy his own broom, but he thought that the WhirlWind looked like quite a good broom.

Dom was petting Oddball that once more had curled up inside his T-shirt, warning Nicola to never let Fortuna be alone with his precious rat.

The chatter ceased as the door of the compartment was opened and Harry, Hermione and Ron walked in, giving the four teens a friendly smile, it seemed curiosity had brought them there to investigate a bit more about these four new students.

Nicolas gave his seat to Hermione and placed himself besides J.P on the trunk. Ron and Harry simply sat down on the floor between the seats. Expectantly they looked at the quartet and at Lupin, it took a few moments before they actually spoke, Ron being the first to break the silence.

"So are you going to tell us who you people are or do we have to drag it out of you?"

Hermione gave him a rather disapproving look that the red haired boy pointedly ignored as he looked at each of the quartet in turn. 

Anita smiled, she had always liked Ron's character in the book, and it seemed to her that he was not at all different in real life, she waved at him and Harry as to catch their attention, pushing her glasses back up on her nose before she spoke.

"Well, I suppose we better tell you. We don't want to be hexed again. Or do we, guys?."

The quartet chuckled loudly at this comment and each of them felt a bit less uncomfortable after the small joke of Anita. She grinned and proceeded to introduce her friends to the people that only weeks ago, had been nothing but characters in a book.

"Over there on the trunk you have J.P and Nicolas. J.P is short for Jean Phillipe. And just so you know, Nicolas is a lot kinder than he looks like, he couldn't hurt a fly... intentionally.

The one petting his stomach is Dom, or Dominic. Don't be fooled by his 'handsome' looks, he is quite a devil when you get to know him.

And I am Anita, short of Ana Maria.

A pleasure and a honour to know all of you..... personally I mean."

Each of the teens nodded slightly as she introduced them, Dom shot the three friends a rather horrifying grin before being whapped over the head by Anita. This starting a insult match between the two of them that ended rather abruptly as they realised that Hermione was starting to say something.

"I believe you four are not students of Hogwarts, you don't have insignias nor school ties, yet you all seem to know both Ron, Harry and me quite well since you didn't ask our names. And you didn't even react to Harry speaking to you, as any foreign wizard student would do. 

I suppose there is a good reason for your behaviour. You all seem to be quite decent people, specially since you don't mind Professor Lupin sharing compartment with you.

And that comment about hexing...."

Hermione's monologue was interrupted by Lupin as he cleared his throat to call upon the attention of the three friends. He went quiet a moment as to think of the best way to explain the situation to Harry, Ron and Hermione. After a moment of pondering he realised that it would be best for him to actually tell them the truth. They had proved before that they were worthy to be trusted.

"Well you see, it all started in a cinema in London....."

------------------------------------------------- o -------------------------------------------------------------

The compartment was filled with loud laughter of the seven young teens that were inside it. As the retelling of what happened to the quartet ended Ron and Harry were almost rolling around on the floor in laughter as Hermione was trying to keep a straight face, but the small giggles escaping her lips betrayed her joyous mood.

"I can't believe you did that!.... And those Aurors....."

"You were lucky they had totally forbidden using any killing curses. You could have been killed."

"Really? A whole serie of books and two movies... all about me?"

The quartet were laughing along with the three friends. It seemed to them that they had already found their first three friends in Hogwarts.

The laughing was interrupted as the witch with the candy cart passed by and offered the passengers her sweets and drinks. The quartet was eager to try all the candies and sweets they had read about in the books and swiftly placed their orders.

"Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans!"

"Chocolate frogs!"

"Fudge Flies

"Pumpkin pastries!"

Soon all of the teens, and even Lupin, had their laps filled with sweets of different kinds. Anita and Hermione were both enjoying some chocolate frogs and reading of the cards, Hermione deciding to help Anita start her own collection by giving her the cards she had repeated. 

Dom was chewing on the fudge flies and sharing one with his dear Oddball while Ron looked if Crookshanks made any movement to scare the rat away and was pleased when he didn't, meaning Oddball was probably just a normal rat despite its strange appearance. 

J.P was munching happily on his pumpkin pastry and commenting on how good it was with Lupin. The former teacher tried to agree but his mouth was so full he could only nod.

Nicolas was staring at his fifth Bertie Bott bean. This one was of a slight pink colour. Harry was looking at the tall boy with a small smirk.

"So, you going to eat that or not?"

Nicolas sniffed the bean suspiciously before shaking his head slightly.

"Knowing my luck it will be something disgusting. Have already had one booger, one liver and one tripe flavoured ones. I better stop before I get something really nasty."

Harry nodded but then smiled slightly.

"Well you are forgetting the chocolate one. Come on, what are the odds of getting another bad one.... Besides I think you already got all the most disgusting ones."

Nicolas tilted his head and let the bean roll between his fingers, as if staring at the sweet it would reveal its true taste to him. In the end he shrugged and popped the sweet into his mouth, chewing it for a second before turning green, jumping up from his seat and run out of he compartment. Moments later loud retching could be heard from the closest bathroom.

Harry was sitting still staring at the door where Nicolas had disappeared, he turned to look at Ron who seemed as suprised as him, then realisation dawned on both of them. The only bean flavour that had ever induced such a reaction to both of them was that of...

"...vomit."

The retching sound continued as Harry scratched the back of his head, feeling guilty all of a sudden. But who could possibly know that Nicolas would have THAT much of a bad luck.

J.P, Dom and Anita simply shook their heads as they saw the Dark Destiny of Nicolas strike again.

----------------------------------------------- o ------------------------------------------------------

The rest of the trip was without any major events. Nicolas returned from the bathroom still looking rather green and refused to even look at the rest of the colourful beans, giving them all to J.P.

Ron, Harry and Hermione excused themselves and returned to their own compartment as the train moved closer to Hogwarts, saying they had to change into their school uniform. 

The quartet deciding they would do the same. Chuckling a bit as they saw how they looked in robes, feeling a bit nervous about meeting the rest of the students and about the sorting. What house would they be in?

Lupin tried to calm down the four teens as they moved to get off the train, only to be met with someothing that resembled quite much a wall of water. Rain was pouring down so hard and fast that they were all soaked before reaching the end of the platform.

A humongeous man was standing there and waving the first year students toward the boats. The quartet just gawked at him, he was definitely enormous, Robbie Coltrane was way too small to actually portray the large man.

"That.... mountain of a man.... must be...Hagrid."

Said Anita, her teeth chattering with cold. The other teens agreed with her and simply walked by the only man that had managed to make Nicolas look short.

Soon enough they saw the carriages that were waiting for them, apparently not horses or other animals were pulling them. Suddenly both Anita and J.P froze dead in their tracks, none of them actually making any gesture or movement toward the carriages, it was as if they were mesmerised by something.

Lupin placed a hand on each of their shoulders and whispered something into their ears, the two teens nodding slowly and once more starting to walk toward the carriage.

Both J.P and Anita were extremely quiet during their ride toward Hogwarts, not even looking out when Dom proclaimed they were passing by the statues of winged pigs. It seemed that the two of them had suddenly seen something they wish they had not seen, and were sorry for actually seeing it.

But they cheered up as they stopped in front of the castle and the doors of the carriage opened, allowing the quartet to descend from their transport and into the pouring rain before running into the entrance hall of the castle, escaping the cold drops of rain.

But the relief lasted only for a few moments as the students were pelted with water balloons filled with ice cold water. The raindrops even seemed like a nice warm shower compared to the liquid filled projectiles.

The quartet ran for cover behind one of the large pillars, listening to the loud racket the poltergeist Peeves was making. Soon they also heard the autoritary voice of a woman yelling to the mischievous ghost.

"PEEVES!... Peeves, come down here RIGHT AWAY!"

The order was followed by a small screech and the sound of someone stumbling on the rock floor.

Dom looked out from their hiding place long enough to see a elderly witch with a very strict look on her face hold on to Hermione before getting to her feet again and continue her bellowing at the laughing poltergeist. Peeves continue bothering the students for a few moments before disappearing up the stairs, laughing and cackling like crazy.

The four friends heard the strict looking teacher ordering the students into the great hall and were about to follow the rest of the crowd but stopped as they heard the voice of Lupin, calling on them from close to the stairs.

"You are not supposed to go along with the other students. At least not for now. You have to be sorted into a respective house first. Since none of you is a first year student Dumbledore has decided to sort you at the end of the ceremony, after explaining your situation to the rest of the students. So you have to wait here with me until we are called upon."

The teens nodded at Lupin, but they couldn't help but looking longingly at the door leading into the great hall, listening to the cheering of the students as the new members of each house was announced. All four were wondering if they would be received with those kind of cheers or if they would just be stared at, like strange bugs on display.... Maybe the other students wouldn't accept them at all.

All those thoughts were brought to a halt as Lupin suddenly started walking toward the double bladed door of the great hall, waving the teens to follow him. Or the first time since they had woke up and knew they were now wizards the four teens wished they were just normal muggles again. But there was no turning back anymore. Taking a deep breath the four of them entered the great hall.

As they had expected they were looked at, glared at and even scowled at (mostly by the people at the Slytherin table) as they walked down the middle of the hall toward the chair where the old and worn Sorting hat was waiting.

Dumbledore was looking at them from behind the high table, a slight twinkle in his eyes as he nodded slowly to the four scared teens. The other teachers were eyeing the four ex – muggles as they moved closer and finally stopped in front of the chair. Snape snarled at Lupin who pointedly ignored the greasy-haired teacher.

Dumbledore got to his feet and spoke out loud enough for everybody in the hall to actually hear his voice.

"Welcome, welcome all to Hogwarts, All of us here are glad to have such fine young people among us tonight. We know you all feel a bit confused about what has happened to you and what will continue happening from now on. I trust you will find the answers you seek among your co –students and teachers. 

But for now we shall see in what house you belong."

McGonagall slowly walked over to the hat and spoke the name of the four friends that would be sorted first.

"Nicolas Homsy"

Nicolas shyly steped up and sat down, McGonagall place the Sorting hat on his head.

But instead of calling out the name of the house where Nicolas belonged the Sorting hat started singing, s short little tune, quite different to those hat it sang at the beginning of each year

__

What a sight for a hat to see

Four muggles in a school of wizardy

History's wheel spins around

Magical powers are unbound

A prank gone wrong, a twist, a whorl

Now you belong to our world

Magic flows now in your veins

This may cause both joy and pains

Now before the song becomes too long

Lets see in which house you belong.

Nicolas was still writhing slightly in his chair as the hat sung, he wondered where he would end up. Cold sweat started forming on his forehead.

"I think you belong in... HUFFLEPUFF!"

McGonagall removed the hat from Nicolas' head and nodded toward the Hufflepuff table. The students there were wondering if they should dare to cheer for their new classmate, after all he was still kind of weird.

Suddenly loud applause and cheering rang trough the air as Nicolas sat down by it, but not from the Hufflepuff table but from the Gryffindor table where Hermione, Ron and Harry were applauding Nicolas. Soon the twins, Ginny and Neville joined the applause. And soon everybody, except the Slytherins were cheering for Nicolas.

McGonagall smiled and called out the name of the next one to be sorted.

"Jean Phillipe Mailhot."

J.P swallowed nervously and pushed his glasses up on his nose as he walked over to the stool and sat down. 

Not before it had touched his curly head the Sorting hat called out.

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Cheers started immediately as J.P smiled and got up from the stool and walked over to the table were found a seat close to the Wesley twins. He waved at Nicolas that was sitting on the Hufflepuff table, and looking quite lost one could say. J.P could only hope that at least one of his friends would end up in Gryffindor as he had.

The strict transfiguration teacher called out the next name.

"Dominic Prevost."

Dom gave Anita a reassuring look and walked over to the stool. McGonagall had certain problems when placing the hat on the spiky head of the teen but she finally manages.

The hat was silent for a whole minute before calling out.

"SLYTHERIN!"

There was a shocked silence as Dom got up from his stool and walked toward the Slytherin table with a rather cocky smirk on his lips. As he walked by Draco and his friends he blew a kiss to the platinum blond boy, causing him to cringe in his seat. Dom just laughed and found a seat by the far end of the table, simply ignoring any comment that came from the snakes.

Now Anita was the last one, she looked at her friends rather nervously and prayed that she would end up in the same house as them. She sat down on the stool, closing her eyes tight as the hat slid down on her head.

"RAVENCLAW!"

She felt her stomach suddenly seem hollow, as if she had a hole in the middle of her body that couldn't be filled up with anything. She wouldn't be able to be close to any of her friends. And she didn't even remember the names of the people from Ravenclaw that had been mentioned in the book.

She walked over to the table of her house and looked longingly at her friends that all gave her the same lost look back.

This was going to be a long school year.

-------------------------------------------------- o--------------------------------

End chapter five.

Oh I am mean.. so very mean... separating the friends and placing them in different houses.. how on earth will they survive?

Just continue reading my story and you'll know....

Any suggestions and ideas are accepted.

Thanks for reading.


	6. Banquet and new teachers

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters you may recognise from the book. All of them belong to that wonderful writer J.K Rowlings. 

Dom, Nicolas, J.P and Anita are all real people that are really enjoying being in my story.

I have created any creature and person you don't recognise from the books.

This story takes place after the publishing of The Prisoner of Azkaban, and the release of the second Harry Potter movie.

Harry is in his fourth year at Hogwarts.

---------------------------------- o ------------------------------------------

****

Chapter six: Banquets and new teachers .

Now that the sorting was over, Professor Dumbledore got to his feet and smiled to the students, his arms wide open in sign of welcome to all the students in the hall.

"I only have two words to say to you all.... Tuck in!"

Each at their separate table the four friends marvelled over the food that all of a sudden appeared on their plates, gawking at the different types of food. It took a second or two before they actually managed to realise the food in front of them was real and started doing as Professor Dumbledore had told them too, tucking in as much as they could.

Anita was looking at her fellow Ravenclaws, trying to find the few names she recognised from the books, Cho Chang and Padma Patil She spotted the two girls sitting at the opposite of her table, and apparently they had been speaking about her, because as her eyes moved to the two dark haired girls they stopped talking immediately and stared into their plates. Anita felt uncomfortable all of a sudden, she had never liked people to pay too much attention to her. She was actually quite shy, but hid that weakness behind a veil of sympathy and seemingly endless jokes. The only ones she had felt comfortable with were her three friends, that were now in different houses than her, no one was talking to her at the moment and she felt quite lonely. In silence she bowed over her plate and chewed on a piece of chocolate gateau that had appeared on her plate after the rests of her main course had disappeared, finding the sweet dessert quite tasteless.

By the Hufflepuff table Nicolas was eating so fast and so much that most students actually laid down their cutlery to look at the tall teen almost inhale his food without chewing it. Nicolas was oblivious both to their silence and to their stares as he continued chewing and eating as if there was no tomorrow, stopping only when the food on his plate disappears only to be replaced with tasty desserts. Never before had Nicolas ate this much, and he was still hungry.

Cedric Diggory was the first one to break the silence, with a friendly smile he looked toward Nicolas.

"Well... its good to have someone else with a healthy appetite in our house. But please do leave something for the rest of us."

Nicolas stopped eating and blushed, suddenly ashamed of his appetite. But the shame was dispelled as Cedric winked at him before stuffing his face with a huge piece of treacle tart, showing he was just as good as Nicolas to eat. Nicolas smiled slightly back before returning to his own piece of tart. He was already starting to feel at home among the cheerful Hufflepuffs.

Dom was eating slowly and with measure, his eyes moving over the many people at the Slytherin table, most f who were scowling at him. How could he, a muggle!, have been chosen into the prestigious Slytherin house. They all were pondering how the could get rid of him, and specially Draco was pondering his revenge for that little kiss Dom had blown to him.

Dom suddenly looked up, a rather evil glint in his eyes.

"Why are you ugly lot not talking? Voldemort got your tongues?"

The Snakes all gasped in unison, how could he say the name of You-Know-Who so easily? As if it didn't affect him in the slightest. He was a MUGGLE, the dark lord killed muggles whenever he felt like it. How could this simple muggle speak his name without shaking in fear?

Dom smirked as he saw the reaction of his housemates, this was going to be interesting.

At the Gryffindor table J.P was speaking with Fred and George while eating a bit from each plate, but staying far, far away from the kidney pie.

"So you and your friends actually got hexed by Aurors for throwing a prank in a cinema. Woh! You four are now our new heroes... But only until we think up a better prank than yours."

J.P chuckled and eye the two twins carefully, they seemed to be quite joyful and funny people to be around, he decided to never get on their bad side thou.

Suddenly a loud racket was heard from the end of the table as Hermione seemed to be discussing something with Ron and Harry, but he was too far away to actually hear what they were speaking about.

Soon the plates were all empty and the students were full, except Hermione that for some reason J.P didn't know had refused to eat anything after her discussion with Harry and Ron.

The Headmaster got to his feet and spoke to the large congregation of students that all listened in silence as he spoke

"So! Now that we are all fed and watered I must ask for your attention once again, while I give out a few important notices.

The Caretaker, Mr. Filch, has asked me to tell you that the list of objects forbidden inside the castle has this year been extended to include Ever-Bashing Boomerangs, Screaming Yo-yos and Fanged Frisbees. The full list comprises some four hundred and thirty-seven items, and can be viewed in Mr. Filch's office, if anybody would like to check it.

As always remind you all that the forest on the grounds is off-bounds to students, and so is the village of Hogsmeade to all below third year and those without their signed authorisation. 

It is also my unpleasant duty to inform you all that this year there will be no Inter-House Quidditch Cup."

The words of Professor Dumbledore caused quite a bit of commotion in all the tables. No quidditch for a whole year? What was the reasons that could drive the teaching staff to such a decision. All the people that were on the quidditch teams of all the houses rised their voices in protest. Anita also protested, she was so eager to try her new WhirlWind that she could hardly wait. Professor Dumbledore waited for people to calm down slightly before taking once more. 

"The reason for this is a very important event that will start in October and continue trough the whole school year. A event that will take up the strength and dedication of the teacher staff.

But I am pretty sure that you will all enjoy this event quite much. I have great pleasure in announcing that this year at Hogwarts- "

The words that should have left Dumbledore's mouth drowned in a deep rumbling thunder and the sound of the double doors of the great hall bursting open.

A man appeared in the doorway, leaning heavily upon a long walking stick, shrouded in a black and heavy looking cloak. He lowered the cowl of his cloak letting the grey locks of his grizzly looking mane fall down his shoulders before starting to walk toward the teachers' table. A dull clunk echoed through the hall as he walked, as if one of his shoes were heavier than the other and with a thicker sole. He paid no attention to the students that were all staring at him as he moved toward the head table, toward Dumbledore. A flash of lightning crossed the ceiling, as if wanting to reveal the features of the man. Anita could hear Hermione gasping, and she was about to let a gasp escape her too. The lightning had lit up the room and thrown the man's face into full view, a face unlike anything the four teens had ever seen. It looked as if it was made out of weathered wood, the features carved out by hands that had only a slight idea how a human face should look yet had failed in his attempt in making said face. Scar upon scar covered the skin of the face, the mouth resembling a open wound running in diagonal over the lower part of the face and a large piece of the crooked nose was missing. Yet it was not all these features that made the man scary, it was his eyes that made him really frightening. There was one small, beady, and dark as night. The other was unnaturally large, round and shiny as a sickle and as blue as the lightning as it crossed the sky. The blue eye was moving always, without blinking, rolling soon up, soon down, from side to side, seemingly completely independent of its normal twin. – suddenly it rolled completely back, as if staring straight trough the skull of the man, leaving only the white to be seen. 

Several of the students seemed scared of the man as he glared at them before reaching the head table and stretching out his hand in greeting to Dumbledore. The hand as covered in scars as his features. Dumbledore didn't doubt in shake the hand of the man, his lips move in a mutter that was too low for anyone to actually hear what he was saying, excepting the stranger, who answered in his own mutter. Dumbledore nodded and made a gesture toward the seat that was at his right side, a seat that had been empty all the evening.

The strange man nodded and moved to seat himself, pulling a plate of sausages towards him, letting the slightly spicy smell reach to his nose before taking out a small and shiny knife, pinning one of the sausages on it and proceeding to eat it slowly. The only thing that didn't seem to rest was his blue eyes, that continued swirling around in its orbit ceaselessly.

Dumbledore turned to look at the students that were still completely transfixed, staring at the stranger as if they had never seen anything like him, which they probably hadn't. He lifted his arm as to ask for silence and then spoke out to the hall once more.

"I would like to introduce our new Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher. Professor Moody."

The silence in the hall was abysmal, no student, not teacher for that sake, dared to applaud at the new teacher. Usually there was always a warm welcome for the new members of the staff, but this time the appearance of the new teacher had been enough to scare the students to silence. Only the clapping of Dumbledore and Hagrid were heard in the great hall.

Anita looked over at her four friends, each of them returning a nod. They were all very confused about the new teacher, he looked like he had been almost ripped to pieces several times, how could he teach them to defend themselves, and would his training leave them as filled with scars as he was?

Only time would show.

-------------------------------------------------- o--------------------------------

Suddenly attention returned to Dumbledore as Professor McGonagall cleared her throat loudly, making the older mage suddenly remember his prior announcement.

"Ah yes, the important announcement... Sorry.

The thing I was about to tell you all before professor Moody arrived was that we have the honour of hosting the Triwizard Tournament of this year."

The four new wizards could only watch as most of the students started speaking excitedly among them, some of them looking as confused at the four friends but most of them actually. Anita was too shy to actually try to speak with anyone at her table so she simply waited for an explanations from Professor Dumbledore, as was Dom, none of his fellow Slytherin's even looked in his direction, even less talked to him.

Nicolas and J.P were lucky enough to be seated close to someone that actually knew what the headmaster was talking about. The wide gestures of both Fred, George and Cedric coming to a abrupt halt as Professor Dumbledore started speaking once more.

"Some of the younger among us may not know what this tournament is about, so I hope those who know about it will forgive me for this little explanation. The Triwizard Tournament started as a friendly competition between the three wizardry schools on the European continent: Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang. A champion was chosen from each school to compete in three magical tasks. Each five years one of the schools would lend its grounds to the realisation of the games, everybody agreed this to be a quite good way to create friendly competition between the schools, creating ties of friendship between your wizards and witches from the different countries – at least they thought so until number of deaths grew so high that the tournament was deemed unsafe and banished."

The four friends once more exchanged scared looks with each others, so the sports in the wizard world were quite deadly, they were wondering if everything would be so dangerous, if so this would be a interesting and frightening life to live.

Dumbledore continued his explanations.

"Despite all this, our departments of International Magical Co-operation and Magical Games and Sports have decided that it is time to give the tournament another try. We have all worked over the summer to make sure that this time, no champion will find himself or herself in mortal danger of any sort.

The headmasters of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be arriving with some of their students late October, and remaining housed on our grounds during most of the school year. I am certain that you all will know hot to be good host to our foreign guests, showing them courtesy while they are among all of us. I am also sure you all will give all your support to the elected Hogwarts champion after he or she is selected Champion selection will take place at Halloween. An impartial judge will decide which of the several students of all three schools are most worthy to compete for the Triwizard Cup, the honour and glory of their school, and a thousand Galleons that will be given to the winner. 

I know all of you will eager, to say the least, be to bring the Triwizard Cup to Hogwarts 

But for safety reasons we, the heads of the participating schools, along with the Ministry of Magic, have decided to impose an age restriction on contenders this year. Only students that are seventeen years or older will even be considerate as possible participants.." 

Several yells of disappointment crossed the hall, most loudest were the protests from the Wesley twins. Both of them had already started to imagine what wonderful pranks they could do with a thousand galleons. Hey were extremely disappointed over the fact that they would not be able to even be up for election.

Dumbledore rised his arms once more asking for silence.

"We all feel that this measure is necessary, since there may be some challenges that our younger students are not yet apt to face, both in knowledge and in skills. I will personally make sure that no student under sixth year tries to enter the tournament, trying to make our impartial judge choose them as the Hogwarts champion. I suggest that you don't waste your time submitting your names if you are under seventeen. 

This was all about the tournament. It is pretty late, we have all enjoyed a abundant meal and need rest. Since your classes start tomorrow I know you all need rest to be awake and ready for the first lessons early tomorrow. Bedtime for you all! The headboy and headgirl of each house will show you to your dormitories. Chop chop!"

Everybody started getting out of their seats and heading toward the exits, following the calls of the headboys and headgirls that were gathering the students of each house. Anita, J.P, Dom and Nicolas were about to leave the great hall when the voice of Dumbledore held them back, calling all four of them back to the main table.

The rest of the teachers had already left the room, only the Headmaster and the four students were left in the great hall. Dumbledore looked at the four of them, his periwinkle coloured eyes twinkling slightly, a soft smile curving the sides of his mouth.

"Well, well, well. It is a true pleasure to see you four again. I am glad all of you made it to Hogwarts without any problems. It was quite a suprise, I have to admit, that the sorting hat decided to put you all in different houses. But I suppose it knows what its doing, it is – after all – a very intelligent hat."

Dumbledore chuckled and nodded slightly toward the hat that was still sitting on the stool where McGonagall left if. The four teens listened in silence, not really knowing what to say.

"I shall not take too much of your time, I just wanted to announce that you four will have extra classes with all the teachers after your regular classes, after all you have quite some years so catch up with.

But there is one thing I want you to know. No one, not even Harry and his friends, can know that Lupin is in the castle. The Ministry has decided that he is a persona non grata on Hogwarts, so his presence here is better hidden than public.

Well now, off to your respective houses you go."

The four teens nodded in silence and walked toward the exit of the main hall, splitting up in the entrance hall, each of them following the distant calls of the headboys of their houses.

------------------------------------ o ------------------------------------------

Nicolas was the first one to reach his common room, the Hufflepuff common room being the second one in the dungeons. He tried to memorise the password ('fidem praestare') but to no avail, he decided to do it the next day, when he was rested. He walked across the common room, following the male students up to the boy dormitories. He was amazed to see that they actually had a bed that was long enough for him to sleep in without having to curl up. The wood didn't seemed to be new and there was no smell of paint coming from the bedposts. Could it be that they actually once had a student just as big, if not bigger than himself?

To tired to think more about it he unclothed and got into his pyjamas before laying down in his bed. His last thought before falling asleep was a hope for having the same classes as his friends the next day.

Dom was walking slowly after the rest of the Slytherins, having no need to speed after them, he actually was wondering what would happen when he was left alone with the group of people that actually loathed him for being what he was, a muggle endowed with magical powers. He stayed behind the group as they entered the common room, but close enough to the to learn the password ('Pure blood') and make a despective snort at the originality of the snakes. Once inside the common room he looked around and found himself trapped in a semi circle of the older students, all of them glaring hatefully at him.

"What do you think you are doing in here _muggle_, this is the dormitory of true pure bloods, not mud bloods as yourself."

Dom didn't seem at all phased by the words of the students, instead he placed his hands on his hips and smirked at them.

"Well then.. who is going to keep me out? _Voldemort?!_"

Once again the snakes cringed at the name of the Dark Lord, some of them paling considerably at the cold voice and calm of the student, he didn't seem to fear any of them, and not even the name of You-Know-Who was enough to break the icy demeanour of the former muggle.

Draco took one step forward and opened his mouth as if to reply to Dom.

With the speed of lightning Dom pulled out his wand and pointed it at Draco, remembering one of the hexes he had studied the night he had passed in the Leaky Cauldron and that he had used on Oddball when he had been protesting against being stuffed in a pocket prior their departure.

"CLUSUM!"

Draco felt as if someone had placed a giant hand over his mouth, holding in all the words he was about to say. He struggled to actually utter a word, but all that came out was air.

Dom smirked, looking quite happy with himself, pocketing his wand and simply making his way trough the mass of seemingly petrified students, turning on his heels before entering the boy's dormitory and bowing to the rest of the snakes.

"Good night to all... And don't try anything funny.... I sleep extremely light."

Anita had to walk quite a long way, speeding after the other students after she had lingered for too long in the stairs ( one of them had actually moved away while she was standing on it, forcing her to wait for another stair to come to her aid.) After quite an exhausting run she reached the last students of the group, they acknowledged her presence with a small nod, but nothing more. She once more felt the cold of loneliness covering her, she wished she had been sorted into any of the other houses, just to be close to her friends, even being sorted into Slytherin sounded like a good idea right now.

The doors to the common room opened as the headgirl said the password ('perspicientia') and let several of the students into their new home for the school year. 

Anita saw the several gazes following her, specially those of Padma and Cho, both girls whispering among them as they pointed directly at her, not caring if she saw them it seemed. Anita felt a wave of shyness washing over her, and anger. Why did they treat her as she was a curios exotic animal on display, she hated that... she had always hated it. Finally anger won over shyness as she walked straight over to Padma and Cho, her green eyes seemingly quite poisonous behind the crystal of her glasses.

"Would you two stop staring at me... It is rude and it bothers me to no end. If you have anything to say to me then please do.. BUT TO MY FACE!

I am quite certain that you both understand what I am saying despite me being nothing more than a simple muggle that fortune has decided to put in your way. Well just so you know, I don't need magic to notice when you two are talking about me... I have ears and I have eyes and both of them work quite well.

Now if you excuse me I am going to bed. Good Night!"

Anita shook her head, her long chestnut ponytail dancing over her shoulder as she muttered to herself, now she had done it, again. Losing her temper like that, and no one around to calm her down afterwards. She felt like punching a hole in the wall. Instead she headed to the girls dormitory and go into her pyjama, some of the girls noticing the several scars over her legs but not saying anything. She laid out one of her old T-shirts on the floor for Devlin to sleep on and then, exhausted by the events of the day, she got to bed where she fell asleep almost inmediatly.

The students belonging to the Gryffindor house had long since reached their common room as J.P started searching for it. He tried to remember the way there according to the book but after a while he realised he was hopelessly lost. He looked around to see if he could find any of the others, but he didn't see or hear anyone. No..wait. There was someone, or rather something coming his way. His eyes grew wide as he saw that it was none less than Sir Nicholas Mimsy-Porpington, or to be more correct, his ghost. J.P bowed to the spectral figure when it noticed him and in the most polite tone he could he spoke to the spectre.

"Good evening sir, it seems I have lost my housemates and I am new to the school, would you be so kind to show me where the Gryffindor common room is?"

The ghost was pleasantly suprised over the fact that someone actually treated him with the respect someone of his high status deserved. He nodded at the young man (causing his head to sway dangerously on his doublet) as he started floating up some stairs.

"Of course I can young man. A new student belonging to the Gryffindor house can always ask for my help. I am, after all, the Gryffindor ghost. As you may have guessed I am Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington. And who may you be my young friend."

J.P was following the ghost, his eyes darting from side to side as they moved trough the corridors, several people in ancient paintings waved at him as they passed by. Soon they reached the painting of the Fat Lady. J.P bowed to both the lady in the painting and to the ghost.

"My name is Jean Phillipe Mailhot. It was a pleasure to meet you Sir Nicholas, and thank you once more for leading me here."

The ghost nodded once more at J.P, his head actually almost falling off this time, causing J.P to cringe slightly. The Fat Lady didn't ask for the password as she saw that he was in company of the Gryffindor ghost and swinged open, revealing the entrance to the Gryffindor common room.

J.P moved in and was slightly disappointed to see that there was no one in the room, he had hoped for some conversation. His eyes moved over the empty room and he was thrilled when he saw a fireplace and a quite comfortable looking chair in front of it. He decided to contemplate the flames for a while, just a short while.

He sat down and leaned back, the flames dancing their almost hypnotical dance in front of him. Slowly his eyes closed as he fell asleep in the chair.

------------------------------------------------------ o ---------------------------------------------------

End chapter six.

Yes, yes. Lupin is going to be undercover in the school, actually for now no one except Dumbledore and the four knows that he is there.

Next chapter will be up soon 

Any suggestions and ideas are accepted.

Thanks for reading and reviewing.

'fidem praestare' = Always faithful

"CLUSUM!" = Literally, shut up

'perspicientia' = Awareness of knowledge


	7. Rude awakenings

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters you may recognise from the book. All of them belong to that wonderful writer J.K Rowlings. 

Dom, Nicolas, J.P and Anita are all real people that are really enjoying being in my story.

I have created any creature and person you don't recognise from the books.

This story takes place after the publishing of The Prisoner of Azkaban, and the release of the second Harry Potter movie.

Harry is in his fourth year at Hogwarts.

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Chapter seven: Rude awakenings.

__

"Shhh...don't wake him up..."

"Are you sure it won't blow his face off? I don't fancy detention the first day."

"Nah.. it will just make a lot of noise... right between the lips... now run!"

Those were the whispers that broke trough the deep sleep of J.P, he didn't even feel when the placed a small Filibuster no-heat firecracker between his lips.

All he knew was that all of a sudden the world exploded and there was a acrid smell of powder in the room. He opened his eyes and blinked twice, the crystals of his glasses seeming to be more dirty than usual. He took them off and wiped them clean on his robe before placing them back on his nose. Fred and George came suddenly into view, both of them looking quite amazed at J.P, that despite having a firecracker explode mere inches from his face didn't seem at all worried. In fact he still seemed to be half asleep as he slowly got out of the chair and stumbled toward the bathroom, his face black with sot.

"Just what kind of muggle did he used to be Fred? Even Dumbledore would have reacted to that."

"I don't know George. Maybe it has something to do with his friends... if so.. we better be careful."

Soon after, he returned with his face clean, moving up to the boy's dormitory to change into some clean clothes. He looked toward Fred and George and grinned slightly.

"You'll both have to do something better to scare me you know...Try getting ideas from Anita, or Dom."

The twins laughed and gor a sreange look from Ron, Hermione and Harry that were all coming down to the common room. J.P decided to walk along with the twin to the great hall, since Harry, Hermione and Ron seemed to be discussing certain important matters. The rest of the students were already having breakfast, each house settled at their own table. J.P sat down along with the twins after asking for a copy of the schedule of the day from Harry. So herbology with the Hufflepuffs, that would mean he would see Nicolas. And after that Care of Magical Creatures with Slytherin, where he would see Dom. Then there was lunch. He saw something was different from the schedule he had received from McGonagall and the one Harry had. After the dinner break, every day they had double classes of something, transfiguration, potions, defence against dark arts. He looked slightly overwhelmed at the thought of all those extra classes. But then he realised. He would have those classes alone along with his friends. He smiled slightly at this thought, well then it wouldn't be all bad. He sat down close to the twins and started eating, his eyes darting around the great hall in search for his friends.

Dom's awakening was quite different. He opened his eyes and smirked as he realised her was still in one piece and sleeping in his own bed. That must mean that his little demonstration of hexing powers last night had been enough to keep the rest of the snakes a bay. He got into his school clothes, placed Oddball on his shoulder and started walking down toward the common room. Not before had he reached the end of the stairs before his vision was obscured by a giant fist flying toward his face and hitting him square on the nose.

Goyle, one of the faithful goons of Draco, had been told to take matters in own hands. And he saw nothing better than to simply smash the face of Dom in The fact that Dom seemed quite thin and scrawny despite his tall figure only encouraged the big boy to attack Dom once more, it just seemed so easy. While all these thoughts were moving with the speed of a snail stampede trough a field of peanut butter trough the head of Goyle, Dom had managed to recuperate from the blow and moved a few steps back. His wand out and pointing directly at Goyle.

"Do that again, you big block of fat, and I´ll hex you so many times that your grandchildren will be born with pig snouts and horse tails. Just dare to come close you killer whale."

The dark eyes of Dom, and the fact that the lower half of his face was covered with blood coming from his nose, gave him such a menacing aspect that Goyle decided to move back, Draco and Crabe were not in the common room to help him out, and he had already seen what Dom could do despite his lack of studies. Besides, the teen was laughing almost maniacally as blood ran down from his nose, spotting his chin. The big ham-like fists hung by his sides, clenching and unclenching as his brain struggled to process the information needed to make him bustle out of the room.

Dom cleaned some of the blood off with the sleeve of his robe and sighed. His perfect looks were spoiled for the day. He should have hexed Goyle, but he doubted he could possibly look worse than he usually did. He shrugged slightly and started making his way toward the great hall

The morning sun shone trough the window and right on Devlin, the small crup opened his eyes and looked around, pondering where he was. Then he remembered. He was no longer in that small cage in the Magic Menagerie anymore, he had a new owner. The thought made his forked tail whip from side to side. And speaking of her, she had to wake up soon. Devlin jumped up on Anita's bed and started licking her face, struggling to mage her wake up.

Anita was having a rather pleasant dream when suddenly her face was covered with something warm and wet. She opened her eyes only to gaze up into the maw of Devlin, the small crup doing its best to lick her clean.

"UAAAAGH!!!"

The cry woke up the three girls in the beds close to Anita, but instead of being annoyed the girls laughed in amusement at the small crup that was doing its best to cover Anita with its saliva.

In the end one of them had mercy and got up, coaxing Devlin off his owner with a offering of a stale chocolate frog. The crup jumped down from the bed and gobbled up the chocolate, his forked tail wagging wildly as he pleadingly looked at the girl who had given him chocolate, hoping for more of the delicious tasting treat.

In the meanwhile Anita had recuperated from the love attack and got out of bed. She was getting dressed as she turned towards the girl that had got Devlin off her.

"Thanks for helping me out there. I was seriously fearing he was planning on eating my nose.

My name is Anita Salinas, a pleasure to meet you."

The girl smiled and nodded, throwing another stale chocolate frog at the dog. Anita easily noticed the mouse brown hair and the soft blue eye of the girl as she returned the greeting. In over all she looked to be around eleven years old and had a pleasant and friendly smile.

"Don't worry, Mum has a crup too and I know how effusive they can be. I am Orla Quirke. I was sorted into Ravenclaw yesterday so I am a first year student."

The other two girls had finished dressing and each turned to Anita to introduce themselves. One was a tall ash blonde girl with grey eyes, the other was a cheerful looking red-haird girl with hazel eyes. Both of them just as friendly as Orla had been, their demeanour in all quite better than that of both Cho and Padma

"A pleasure, I am Fionella Sykes. Second year student. Just call me Fiona"

"And I am Katherine Malone. Third year student, and the pleasure is all mine. Call me Kathy, or Kat"

Anita smiled at the three girls, happy to discover that not all Ravenclaw girls were snotty and spoke behind her back like Padma and Cho had. The loud barks of Devlin reminded the girls that the crup was still hungry. Laughing and exchanging jokes they made their way down from the Ravenclaw tower towards the great hall, Devlin in the lead.

Nicolas turned around in the bed, not really wanting to wake up but knowing he had to. Growling slightly he slowly managed to drag himself out of bed and towards the bathroom, bumping his head into the top of no less than three doors. Muttering he returned to the common room, rubbing his head. He was met by the smiling Cedric that apparently was waiting for Nicolas to make his appearance. The two year older boy seemed to like Nicolas for some reason.

"Well, you ready for breakfast now? I am starving to death.

The truth is I was thinking to myself. –Self- I said. – Since both me and Nicolas are such healthy eaters we should maybe organise a eating contest or two.- So I decided to come here and ask if you would be up to such a challenge."

Nicolas couldn't help but smiling. Who would have known that the good looking Hufflepuff could have such a good sense of humour. And even less that he would befriend a muggle/wizard such as Nicolas.

The tall teen nodded and grinned back.

"Well, you better be prepared to lose then. Even J.P can't eat as much as I can. I may not know too well how to use my magic yet, but I sure as hell know how to eat."

Both teens laughed and started heading down to the Great hall, laughing and joking around, as if they had been friends for many years. Once they reached the first floor Nicolas was glad to see Anita walking down the stairs with three girls with Ravenclaw patches on their robes. She saw him and smiled, walking over to give him a good morning hug.

Nicolas shortly explained to Anita his intention to have a eating match with Cedric, something that made the young woman smirk at Cedric.

"You know you are going to lose don't you? There is no way in Hell that you can out-eat Nicolas."

This caused a burst of laughter from Orla, Kat and Fiona. All of them having already seen Cedric eat, it wasn't humanly possible for someone to actually eat more than he did. They pointed this out to Anita. The teen smirked even wider and turned to wink at Nicolas who returned the wink. She then turned toward her new friends.

"Alright, I bet four sickles on Nicolas that he will eat more than Cedric... Do you dare to bet against me?"

All three girls nodded enthusiastically and picked four silver pieces out of the pockets of their robes and showed them to Anita who had pulled twelve sickles out of her own pocket. Cedric looked confident that he would win, Nicolas simply smiled to the two girls.

They made their way to the Hufflepuff table, picking up J.P on the way. The plump ten chuckled a the bet and decided to add his own four sickles to Anita's, both of them betting for Nicolas.

Soon all three friends were at the Hufflepuff table, along with the three Ravenclaw girls, some people from both Gryffindor and Ravenclaw were crowding around the table, anxious to see what would happen. Neville even dared to bet on Cedric, as did Cho and Padma.

Expectation was rising as the food was piled up in front of the two teens that were just grinning at each other. pumpkin pies, toasts, pancakes, fried eggs, bacon, those were some of the things that were placed in front of the teens. As soon as both had the exact same amount of food in front of them Kat lifted her wand.

"Clepsyra!"

A hour glass shape filled with a silvery looking liquid appeared in front of the two contestants. As the first drop fell from the top to the bottom the two started eating. Food was disappearing so fast that it seemed like magic, both boys chewing and swallowing at an amazing speed. Cheers both for Cedric and Nicolas rose from the surrounding crowd, the rhythm slowly started diminishing as both boys were starting to feel quite full. The hour glass was almost completely empty when Cedric lifted one of his arms.

"I can't more... no more. You win Nicolas."

Nicolas didn't stop eating. He was halfway trough a stack of pancakes when the last silvery drop fell into the bottom part of the hour glass, making it disappear in thin air, but he didn't seem to notice. He simply plowed trough the stack of pancakes before putting down his fork and smiling at Cedric.

Anita smirked at her three friends as they shrugged and handed her the sickles, that she promptly shared with J.P, George and Fred, the only ones to actually bet on Nicolas. 

The three teens were so happy about their little victory that they didn't notice Dom as he walked over to the table. In fact his presence wasn't noted until he spoke. Most of the other students recoiled and moved away from Dom, after all he was a Slytherin. But his three friends didn't move away, in fact both J.P and Anita moved closer to Dom, almost as if they were examining him.

The first one to speak was Anita.

"Dom, is there something wrong with your nose? It seem redder than it was yesterday."

Dom shrugged and lifted a hand to touch his nose, making a small grimace as he ran his fingers over it. J.P moved closer to his friend, frowning slightly.

"I do believe someone used your nose as a target. That thing looks like someone slammed something heavy into it. Or did you walk into a door?"

The tall and slightly gangly Dom smirked and nodded.

"Big, heavy and covered with fat. It was Goyle's fist. My first welcome greeting to the Slytherin house I believe. I do hope you all got a warmer welcome than me"

J.P frowned, his hands balling into fists as he glared over to the Slytherin table, his usually calm brown eyes were filled with a expression of rage. Anita noticed this and placed a hand on J.P's shoulder, whispering words into his ear. A few instants passed and a wide grin appeared on J.P's face as he nodded to Anita. The two were plotting something. Dom sighed and placed his hand to his forehead. Nicolas simply chuckled.

The four couldn't plot more since a bell announced the start of the classes. Nodding to eachother J.P and Anita moved separate ways, each to their classes.

J.P moved over to his fellow Gryffindors and Dom reluctantly moved over to the Slytherin table, his hand clutching his wand so hard that his knuckles were white. If anyone of the snakes tried anything funny he would hex them into the next century. Nicolas took a look at his schedule and realised he had his first class with the Gryffindors. Swiftly he got out of his chair and trotted after J.P. 

------------------------------------------------------ o ---------------------------------------------------

"That was disgusting Nicolas. How could you manage to do that?!"

'That' was actually squeezing the pus out of the disgusting looking bubotuber. Most of the class had complained slightly but Nicolas didn't have any qualms when it came to extracting the oily smelling pus, the only problem was that he didn't hear professor Sprout's warning about the gloves. In consequence his hands were now covered with painful looking boils.

Now he was being escorted to the infirmary by J.P, that cringed every time he looked at Nicolas' hands. Nicolas could only shake his head and mutter about his Dark Destiny striking again. He could really not understand how it was that he had so much bad luck.

Madame Pomfrey simply shooed Nicolas into the infirmary and sent J.P back to classes. The loud booming bell already told him it was time for his next class, care of magical creatures. And if his memory didn't fail him he was having that class with the Slytherins. 

Remembering how his friend had looked in the great hall he started trotting down towards Hagrid's hut to see if he looked any worse for wear. And if he did... well Draco and his cohorts will soon find out that Dom had friends, and some of them quite dangerous too.

Fortunately for Draco, he had decided to let Dom be for the day, besides he was preparing his bile filled comments to Hagrid as they moved down toward the rustic hut. J.P arrived after they had been explained about the blast-ended screwt and given the task to feed them several disgusting looking items. J.P fumed as he saw Draco exchange some words with Goyle, pointing at Dom, whose nose had swollen quite a bit.

J.P fumed in anger but realised that he couldn't do anything rash since Hagrid was there, he was a teacher after all. He looked into the crate in front of him, the blast-ended screwts clawing at the sides of the crate, seemingly struggling to get free. A plan dawned in his mind after he heard Hagrid explaining about the stinging, exploding and blood sucking creatures. Clenching his teeth together he placed his hand just within reach of one of the screwts, it reacted immediately by latching onto his hand with the sucker. J.P winced and let out a fake scream of pain as he straightened up and ran towards Hagrid, the screwt still attached to his hand. But as he moved past the crate where Draco was standing he 'accidentally' bumped into the blonde boy, making him fall headfirst into the crate filled with screwts. There were several small explosions and a smell of burnt hair rose from the wooden box. Draco didn't realise what happened before he felt a singing pain in his face. He scrambled himself to his feet, managing to get out of the crate without any major damages, the only thing really noticeable about him was the fact that he had no eyebrows anymore. The enraged Slytherin glared at J.P, but couldn't claim he had done it intentionally, as the screwt had to be removed with brutal force, causing his hand to bleed. No one could do that on purpose, could they?

Dom was trying to hide the wide smirk that was threatening to split is face in half. That J.P, he always managed to get revenge one way or another. That boy was way too lucky for his won good.

The booming sound of the bell indicated the end of the class and the start of lunch hour.

----------------------------------------- o ---------------------------------------------------

In the meanwhile Anita had her first potion class in the dark and damp dungeons.

The Ravenclaws were taking seat as silently as they could when Professor Snape moved in the door, his black robes flowing behind him as he walked to stand behind the desk. 

Anita had seen both movies about Harry Potter, she had also read the three books that were on market so she had managed to make herself a mental image of Snape. This image, to her joy, was quite accurate. The teacher's long, black hair shined with grease. His nose looked like it had been broken a good three times. His eyes were dark and quite strict as he glared at the students, as if searching for a pretext to take points away from Ravenclaw. The students were quiet as mice as they waited for the teacher to start the class.

"Well then.. Today we'll prepare a simple boil curing potion, Madame Pomfrey asked us to make more. It seems that one of our muggle students didn't have enough wit to listen to her instructions and is now suffering the concecuences. Personally I don't understand why Dumbledore could have allowed those useless muggles into our school. As if we didn't have enough with Potter."

Anita could feel as her temper started rising. After all, she was one of the 'useless muggles' Snape was speaking about. She bit her lower lip and cleared her throat as she tried to control the surge of anger that washed trough her. Snape turned his gaze toward the source of the sound that had interrupted his ranting about the four muggle students. His lips parted in a smirk as he spotted Anita.

"Ah, Miss Salinas... One of the failed experiments of the Ministry. As I was saying, you and your friends do not belong here. You probably don't have the slightest idea of anything we are teaching, making us waste our precious time on you. I am quite sure you couldn't even tell me what use armadillo bile has."

Snape looked down at Anita. She looked like she was about to burst into tears, her hands balled into tight fists. He relished in her despair, his smirk growing wider. But suddenly he froze, because from the girl came a low and calm voice, answering his question with great politeness.

"Armadillo bile is used in the wit-sharpening potion, Sir. Along with ginger roots and scarab beetles."

For the first time in many years Snape was actually impressed. Not only had this girl, a former muggle, been able to answer his question more precicely than the Granger girl, but she had also given the rest of the ingredients to the potion. He knew he had not yet taught that particular potion to anyone in her year. So the only way she could know about it was if she had read about it.

But impressed as he was he had absolutely no plans of showing it. He wouldn't give her the pleasure to know she had actually suprised him.

"Well, well, well... A competitor has appeared to Miss Granger. Very well then, since you know so well how to make the potion you shall prepare it right now. I have all ingredients in my cabinet.

The rest of you! Prepare the boil curing potion... NOW!"

He turned to his cabinet and retrieved the ingredients for the wit- sharpening potion and placed them in front of Anita, who was still biting her lower lip, yet her hands were no longer balled into fists, actually one could say she seemed eager to start preparing the potion itself.

Snape gave her no instructions and took a seat behind the desk, staring at her as she closed her eyes for a moment. Then she opened them, pushed her glasses up on her nose and pulled the mortar close to her and started crushing the scarab beetles. Snape watched in silence... he wanted to see what the muggle girl could do.

The hour passed quickly and soon he was walking around the classroom checking the potions of the rest of the Ravenclaw students.

"Too thick...

Its the wrong colour... its supposed to be green, not violet!

That happened because you added the dried nettles after you removed it from the fire.

Be careful! You want to kill us all? Only TWO porcupine quills!!!

Not bad."

He continued his round until he reached Anita, staring into her cauldron. The potion had the right colour and texture, the smell was right. He dipped the stirrer into the cauldron. It didn't melt. His frown became deeper as he realised she had actually managed to make a perfect potion on the first try. Even he had troubles when making a potion for the first time. He turned to her and spoke in a deep, threatening voice.

"How can you explain this Miss Salinas? Where do your talents for making potions come from?"

Anita swallowed several times, a crimson blush coming to her cheeks as she writhed in her chair. Finally she lifted her head and looked at Snape, her green eyes meeting his own dark ones.

"I... like to cook."

Snape felt like someone had just poured liquid lead over his body. Each pore seemed overfilled with a warm and strange feeling of anger and suprise. Cook! She liked to COOK! She was comparing the noble art of making potions to that homely duty. Cooking! Is that what she thought potions to be?!

Before he could actually wrench himself from his suprise the bell rang and announced the end of the class. 

Anita scurried out of the classroom, leaving Snape staring at her cauldron filled with absolutely perfect wit-sharpening potion. 

The potion teacher couldn't believe what had just happened. He stirred the cauldron once, watching the potion swirl slightly.

"She must be one hell of a cook."

That was all he managed to say.

----------------------------------------------------- o ----------------------------------------------

End chapter seven.

Clepsyra = taken from latin. A water clock as used to measure time.

Next chapter will be up soon... maybe. 

Any suggestions and ideas are accepted.

As for the Dom/Ginny pairing.. we will see.

Working on the excitement.

The story of the four will veer away from the Harry Potter story at times.. explanations will be given later in the fanfic.. trust me.

Ah... the quartet has a name.. Thanks to Khi. The name will be revealed in next chapter probably.

Thanks for reading and reviewing.


	8. Extra classes time

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters you may recognise from the book. All of them belong to that wonderful writer J.K Rowlings. 

Dom, Nicolas, J.P and Anita are all real people that are really enjoying being in my story.

I have created any creature and person you don't recognise from the books.

This story takes place after the publishing of The Prisoner of Azkaban, and the release of the second Harry Potter movie.

Harry is in his fourth year at Hogwarts.

---------------------------------- o ------------------------------------------

****

Chapter eight: Extra classes time.

As the Gryffindors left their Care of Magical Creatures class along with the Slytherins, the Ravenclaws finished their potion classes and headed toward the Great hall to have their lunch. This place was common for all houses, yet it was rare to see members of the different houses mingle. Therefor it was actually strange to all the other students to see Anita, J.P and Dom take a seat at the same table, chatting happily. It was even more awkward when several other students both from Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, along with Cedric from Hufflepuff, moved to where the three were sitting, pulling a table along so they would have something to sit around. Most of the Slytherins sneered at the mixed group, most, but not one thin boy with clear ginger curls. He was simply looking longingly at the table where people from the four houses were chatting quite amiably.

Cedric looked around and was puzzled, as he didn't see Nicolas around. J.P quickly explained what had happened at herbology, causing Cedric to cringe slightly, he remembered HIS experience with bubotuber pus.

Kat, Fiona and Orla were all chatting with Anita, who was telling them about her first encounter with the dreaded Snape. J.P was showing Fred and George the wound on the palm of his hand and telling them how he got back at Draco. The twins didn't believe him at first, but one gaze toward the Slytherin table and at the eyebrow-less Draco was enough to convince them. Once more the pranksters at Hogwarts had met their match.

Halfway trough lunch Nicolas appeared in the great hall, his hands almost completely healed, only some small wounds here and there. 

He was received with joy by his three friends and by the small group of people that were sitting around the table. Both Anita and J.P introducing him to their small group of friends from the different houses before telling him about the things that had happened in their respective classes. Dom chuckled as Anita described Snape's flabbergasted face when he saw her perfect potion, and his even more suprised expression at her answer. As they were talking they didn't notice the ginger haired boy in Slytherin robes that was starting to head toward the table, in fact they were completely oblivious to his very existence until a loud voice rose above the rest of the chatter in the great hall.

"So the dirty Irish boy is joining the muggles... how perfect. Going to ask them to include you in their little group, O'Shanty?"

The four friends and everybody at their table, in fact everybody in the great hall turned to stare at the ginger haired Slytherin. The lad, who must be O'Shanty, was standing halfway to the table where the four friends were, staring into the stone floor, a deep crimson oh his cheeks.

He stood in silence for what seemed like an eternity before rising his head and glaring at Draco and the rest of the Slytherins.

"Anythin' is better than bein' witcha lot av poisonous adders! 

No... dat wud be insultin' de adders.. e'en they are better than yer people!"

The loud irish accent ringed trough the room, causing Seamus to look up from his lunch. After all, it was his own dialect that was spoken, and it was quite a lot clearer than his own, he had been in England for quite a bit so he had been loosing his accent. But not this O'Shanty, the lad sounded like he had just arrived from the streets of Dublin.

Draco sneered at the boy, the other students from Slytherin growling at the insolence of the new students, pulling their wands out from their pockets and pointing them at the lad.

"I really don't understand how you can DARE to call yourself a pureblood. Your speeches sound like something a Gryffindor would say. Just go and join the muggles. I bet they would be more than happy to receive you in their little group of imbeciles, you tattered street rat."

At Draco's word the four friends and the people that were at the table with them. Several wands were pointed at the Slytherins, but four wands were directed straight at Draco. Actually there were five wands pointing at Draco, the last one belonging to Seamus. His proud irish blood had won over the hate for the Slytherins as he was defending his countryman.

"Well, well Draco. It seems that losing your eyebrows wasn't quite enough."

Dom smirked as he spoke, his dark eyes ablaze with lust for revenge against the blonde Slytherin student. What did he care that they belonged to the same house. Draco was still nothing more than a selfish, stuck up little turd. 

Dom nodded to Anita who nodded back. A evil smirk coming to her lips. They both lifted their wands at the same time, yelling the exact same words.

"DRACO CALVUS!"

A blue glow surrounded Draco's head as his beautiful blonde hair suddenly shrivelled up and fell off, leaving him as bald as a billiard ball. The Slytherin students were too astounded to actually cast any spells as they saw the completely bald head of Draco. That, and the fact that he had no eyebrows, made him look like a survivor of a nuclear accident of some sort. For a moment there was a total and profound silence in the great hall. And then hell broke lose.

Ron, Harry, Fred and George broke down laughing, rolling on the floor and holding their stomachs. Hermione was trying to give Anita and Dom a reproaching look, but the sides of her mouth were slowly starting to curl upwards. Cedric, Kat, Nicolas, Orla and Fiona were all chuckling loudly while pointing at Draco.

The Slytherin has not yet understood what had happened to him but as he felt a cold breeze on his head he lifted his hand and ran it over the baldness. He looked like someone had just forced him to swallow bubotuber pus as he hissed to Anita and Dom.

"Undo the spell! Undo it NOW!"

Anita looked at Dom and smirked. Dom nodded and turned to grin at Draco.

"Well Draco.. you see that two poor muggles as us doesn't know how to undo spells yet. So you will have to ask some of your fellow purebloods to undo our little spell. I am pretty certain that you oh-so-great wizards know how to revert a simple little hex as that one."

Anita was chuckling, so was all the people that had been seated at their table. The lad, O'Shanty, had decided to join in the laughter as he approached the table of the mixed students, all of them gawking and laughing at the bald Draco. Soon O'Shanty had joined them all in the laughter and mocking of Draco.

The Slytherin students didn't know what to do, the spells seemed to have been blown out of their heads, as if by art of magic. Draco fumed in anger as he realised he couldn't do anything against the four muggles, at least for the moment. Growling in anger he headed out of the great hall, along with the rest of the Snakes.

Anita and Dom turned to look at J.P , who had been alarmingly silent during the whole incident. J.P blew at the end of his wand, as a cowboy would to with his pistol and said in a low voice.

"A simple Excidere spell. Made them forget their spells for a few moments. Not as powerful as Oblivate, but it does the trick for a while.

They are going to be pissed as hell when they remember them."

Dom and Nicolas made victory signs while Anita struggled to stop laughing. The irish lad was happy he had decided to leave the pompous snakes and join the mixed group of friends. He waited until the laughter had stopped before walking toward Anita and stretching out his hand.

"Me, me.... Remind me ter never make yer four cheesed aff.. yer are quite a fearsome foursome of hooligans. 

My name is Ian O'Shanty, fresh from Dublin an' a first year student, sorted into Slytherin for only Bejasus knows waaat call. A true so 'tis pleasure an' 'onour ter meet yer al'."

Anita took his hand and shook it, smiling at the ginger haired lad. If it had not been for the difference in features, and the fact that this boy spoke with a heavy irish accent she would almost have mistaken him for one of the Weasley's.

"Well, the pleasure is all ours. And what did you just call us... Hooligans?

Hmm... I like the sound of that."

She looked to her friends who all nodded back. It seems that a new generation of Marauders had been born.

----------------------------------------------------- o ----------------------------------------------

The rest of the classes of the day passed without major incidents. Anita had History of Magic (where she promptly fell asleep, lulled by the droning voice of professor Binns.), Nicolas had artimancy, Dom had potions, where Snape leaved him alone since he was a Slytherin. J.P had to suffer himself tough a class of divination, where professor Trelawny predicted he would be gored to death by a werewolf.

The Hooligans was extremely happy when dinnertime arrived and they could once more join the rest of their friends in the great hall. They looked over at the Slytherin table and chuckled as they saw that Draco had somehow found a partial antidote to the spell, partial, because his head was covered with small patches of extremely short hair. He looked like he had a bad case of scabies. And just like any dog affected by the illness he seemed to have a hard time not scratching his semi-bald head.

All the friends of the Hooligans were chuckling and making fun of Draco as they ate their dinner, once more having taken place around a small table at one end of the hall. It was quite a unusual group of people. Two Slytherins, four Ravenclaws, two Hufflepuffs and six Gryffindor's, that turned into seven as Ginny decided to join them at their table with the pretext of all her brothers being there. But the sideways gaze told people otherwise. The thing that shocked most of them was that the gaze went straight by Harry and landed on Dom. So the tall and gangly teen, with the eagle like nose and the spiked hair, had managed to catch Ginny's fancy.

Harry noticed he was no longer on the receiving end of Ginny's affection, and for a short moment he felt jealous. But after a moment of reasoning he realised that he actually should feel relieved, now he could concentrate completely on Cho. He still couldn't believe what Anita had told him, about her cold recievement by the beautiful Ravenclaw girl and her friend. He couldn't believe Cho was so petty.

Anyway, dinner passed quite quickly and soon each of the students went off to their own chores. The Foursome sighed slightly as they looked longingly out of the window, the day was beautiful and it was extremely tempting to skip classes and just g outside and share some time with their new friends.

But they knew what teacher they had in extra classes, McGonagall. The Hooligans had read enough about the strict teacher to know better than to try to skip her classes.

With a sigh they headed toward the transfiguration classroom. The only thing positive about this class was the fact that they would be together, all four of them.

The severe face of their teacher was the first thing that greeted them when they finally reached the classroom. McGonagall locked the door behind them and started speaking in a stern voice.

"Very well, I am pleased to see that you are on time. These extra classes will take place every monday evening until you all have reached the same level as all fourth year students. I hope all of you try your best to master the difficult art of transfiguration. Now then...shall we begin?"

Each of the four friends took a seat. In front of them, on the table, there was a small amount of matches. McGonagall explained them what they had to do. First they had to read trough their "_A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration_" during the first half of the class, and then trying to change the matches into needles.

Dom and Anita only managed to set fire to their matches. J.P managed to transform them halfway to needles, the other half remaining made of wood. At the end of the double class only Nicolas had managed to turn one of his matches into a needle, quite pointy too. So pointy in fact that he stung his fingers several times while trying to pick it up.

McGonagall seemed extremely pleased with the progress of J.P and Nicolas, and disappointed with Dom and Anita.

"I think this is enough for our first class. 10 points to Hufflepuff, and 5 points to Gryffindor for their great achievements. Miss Salinas, Mister Prevost, you need to read tough your books again and study harder. I expect you to manage to transform the match next class."

The two friends sighed and nodded to the strict teacher, more reading. Just what they needed, they already had quite a workload from their regular classes and now this.

Well, atleast now they had the rest of the afternoon to dedicate to leisure. And what better place to leisure than the ample grounds of the school. The quartet headed down towards the lake and sat down in the grass. 

Dom and Anita immediately initiated a discussion about how they were going to manage the huge load of homework the extra transfiguration classes would mean. J.P and Nicolas offered helping the two with their notes, this causing Anita to throw herself at the two, hugging them. Nicolas only laughed at her enthusiasm but J.P blushed and started stuttering. Before he actually managed to say something Anita heard the calls of Orla, Kat and Fiona. She excused herself and ran over to her housemates.

J.P looked after her and sighed. Nicolas nudged Dom who was grinning in a knowing way. The Slytherin placed a hand on J.P's shoulder and shook his head slightly.

"You do know that if you don't TELL her you like her she will never notice. Anita can be incredibly oblivious at time. You better act before someone else decides to conquer her. I have seen how some of the other students sometimes shoot her gazes.

Alright, it might just be because she is weird, but even then."

J.P looked toward Anita that was laughing at some joke told to her by her three other friends. He felt a tug of fear at his heart when he thought that someone could actually try to take her away from him. Not that she was really his, but...

His thoughts were broken off by a quaffle flying trough the air and hitting him straight on the head., blowing his glasses off and knocking him to the ground.

He looked up and was not suprised to see Fred and George grinning at him and his friends.

"So we found the Hooligans finally. We were wondering if you had your first flying classes yet. If you had then maybe we could convince you to have a game of Quidditch maybe. We have spoke to Ceddric, Harry and Ron, and they all agreed that it would be fun to try."

Nicolas shook his head, a small smile on his lips. Dom shrugged and J.P shuddered as he placed his glasses back on his nose. He listened to the twins and then swallowed once more, his voice slightly unsteady as he spoke his answer.

"Quidditch? You mean play that on flying brooms... High up in the air? Um... No thanks."

Dom and Nicolas were about to answer as Anita interrupted them as she joined them once more.

"What are you lot talking about? Kat and Fiona just told me that Madam Pomfrey finally managed to give Draco his hair back. But for some odd reason he didn't tell her that we actually did it. We better be careful, that snake knows how to bite"

She then turned to the twins that had picked up the Quaffle. She tilted her head curiously as they told her about the wish of including the Hooligans in a match of Quidditch. Her lips curled upwards in a wide smile as she nodded excitedly.

"So we get to finally fly!!! Great! Where do I sign?"

The twins were happy to see that Anita had agreed. But it would have to wait to another day. The lights in the windows of the castle were starting to light up as the sun was fading behind the horizon. 

The friends started their way back to the castle. This had been a great first day of class.. if only things continued like this it would be great.

------------------------------------------- o ----------------------------------------------

End chapter eight.

DRACO CALVUS = Draco bald

Exidere = to pass from memory

Alrightly do.. sorry for the delay. Life is hectic here.

Now we will concentrate more on the four than on Harry and his peers. I will include Harry and his peers from time to time, but not too much, after all, this story isn't all about him... hehehe

Next chapter: DADA classes with out favourite werewolf!!!!!


	9. Fears Unveiled

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters you may recognise from the book. All of them belong to that wonderful writer J.K Rowlings. 

Dom, Nicolas, J.P and Anita are all real people that are really enjoying being in my story.

I have created any creature and person you don't recognise from the books.

This story takes place after the publishing of The Prisoner of Azkaban, and the release of the second Harry Potter movie.

Harry is in his fourth year at Hogwarts.

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Chapter nine: Fears unveiled.

Strangely enough Draco and his peers left Dom and Ian alone for the night. No harsh words, no insults. Only a icy silence, as if the two wizards never had existed.

Ian felt scared by this change in behaviour and decided to move his things closer to the side of the room where Dom was sleeping. He was lucky that none of the snakes wanted to have the bed by Dom's, apparently they thought they were too good to sleep by an ex -muggle. 

Dom was happy to know he had atleast one friend in Slytherin, even when it was a young first year boy. It was better than having to cope with the cold atmosphere alone. While the other students were sleeping he and Ian had a chat. 

Ian was from Dublin, as he had already stated, and he was the youngest of 4 children. His family was pure blood, but like the Weasleys they were not rich, barely having enough money to come by. Ian was hoping to finish school soon and find a job in the Ministry to help out his family. 

Dom in exchange told him of his life as a muggle. Both him and his three friends were from Canada. They had simply been on a school trip when they decided to do the prank that changed their lives.

Ian couldn't help but laughing at the joke, but each time Dom said the name of the dark lord the young wizard cringed. Dom noticed this and started calling Voldemort for 'Old V'. This was causing Ian to laugh even more.

Night grew deeper and soon they were fast asleep. Not knowing that a certain blonde boy had been listening to each and every of their words, blue eyes glowing coldly in the darkness.

Morning came and another day started. Classes were interesting and frustrating at the same time. All four of the Hooligans felt that there was so much they yet had to learn about the magical world. Hermione had been helping Anita in finding several books in the library, most of them about the wizard world in general. She had even borrowed Anita her own copy of "Hogwarts; a history" so she could find out more about the school.

During breakfast a large barn owl swooped down over the table of the Ravenclaws and dropped a sealed parcel in front of Anita. Orla Fiona and Kat immediately urged her top open it, curious as they were. Anita followed the urging of the girls and swiftly broke the seal.

There was very little written on the parcel, almost nothing. Only three words scribbled in a writing Anita didn't recognise.

You are pretty.

Anita blushed furiously and crumbled up the paper. Who could have sent her this? What it a joke or did someone actually think she was pretty? She looked around but no one was looking toward the table. This was quite a mystery, did she have a secret admirer? She would have to find out more about this later.

J.P and Ron seemed to get along quite well, but not as good as J.P and the twins. The two crazy Weasleys had decided to show the Hooligans around the school during lunch time. Harry and Ron joined them and with the use of the Marauders map they pretty much had explored all of the first floor of the castle before the end of lunch break.

J.P had his first class of potions with Snape, where he was lucky to avoid being the laughingstock of all the class thanks to Hermione that helped him discreetly out with his potion. Snape seemed in a worse than usual as he watched the students as a hawk. Actually managing to get Neville so nervous that the poor boy dropped more dried nettles than the formula indicated. As a result his potion started oozing out of the cauldron and dripping onto the floor. Mould growing instantly where the greenish liquid touched. Snape looked like was about to murder Neville when he walked over to where the plump boy was sitting. But instead he simply stated in a cold voice that Neville was the most useless student ever, and gave him detention.

J.P felt sorry for Neville and was about to protest when Hermione pinched his arm and shook her head. Making Snape angrier was NOT a good idea. And even less when you were a Gryffindor.

J.P frowned and decided to let things be. He didn't feel like being responsible for the loss of house points.

The results were that he left the class in quite a worse mood than when he had entered. J.P had always hated people who abused their power, and Snape was quite abusing his position as a teacher.

Dom, Nicolas and Anita alike didn't have too much to tell about their classes. The teachers have given them loads of homework. Anita was complaining because of the artimancy, she hated numbers of any kinds, and the foul subject consisted mostly in complex mathematical formulas.

Nicolas was proud as a rooster as he had received 10 more points from McGonagall for his excellent transformation of a tortoise into a teakettle. He was beaming Dom and Anita, as they had not yet managed to transfigure their matches into needles, usually only setting fire to them.

Dinner came and went in a flurry of chatter, most of it actually caused by Anita showing the note to the three Ravenclaw friends. The girls immediately started trying to figure out who could have sent her the note. Guessing everyone from Neville to Cedric could be the responsible one. Kat even suspected that one of the twins could have set his eyes on Anita.

This made her blush and stray away from the twins during most of the dinner only receiving strange looks from both Fred and George. 

"What do you think we did now Fred?

I don't know... maybe she finds you smelly.

NO WAY!"

This caused the two Weasleys to bicker during most of the meal. Of course Fiona and Orla took this as a sign that they were fighting over who was going to keep Anita to himself. Ron just stared at his brothers and wondered what had got into their skulls this time. Harry and J.P were discussing the methods of Snape as a teacher, both of them agreeing in one point. He was nothing more than a slimy, greasy git.

Dinner was over before any of them realised it. The four Hooligans excused themselves with their friends and left for their first extra DADA class.

Lupin was waiting for them in one of the towers. He seemed happy to see the four students once more, greeting them with a wide and hearty smile.

"Ah... so there you four are. Or should I call you, you Hooligans."

The teacher chuckled slightly as he saw the amazed look on their faces, it had only been a day since they had been baptised with that particular name and yet he knew.

"I have been speaking with Dumbledore, don't look so suprised.

By the way, great job you two did on Draco, it was about time someone else than Harry dared to give him a taste of his own medicine."

Lupin beamed at Dom and Anita, the two of them blushing slightly. Lupin then turned towards J.P and noticed the teen was looking slightly warily at him, as if he was worried the teacher was about to jump on him for some reason. Lupin lost his smile slightly and wondered what could be the problem but before he could ask Nicolas simply stated.

"Get over it J.P. We all know Trelawny is nothing more than a hoax. There is no way Lupin here is going to gore you to death"

Oh so that was it! What a relief! Lupin felt as if a great burden had been lifted off his shoulders. He wouldn't want the four students to fear him. Besides Harry and his peers, they were some of the students that he appreciated the most. They could even be thought of as friends.

He suddenly remembered that they were supposed to have classes and swiftly shooed them inside the room before locking the door behind them to avoid intrusion from any curious student.

"Very well. This first class we will work with something quite interesting. You all se the broom closet in the other end of the room? Good. In there I have managed to strap a boggard. I suppose you all know what kind of creature that is. 

Now I want you all to concentrate on making the creature into the most ridiculous thing you could imagine. The incantation to perform the spell is '_Riddikulus**´**_. Alright mister Prevost, you will be first.**_"_**

Dom looked apprehensively toward the closet. This was their first meeting with a magical creature that could actually harm them if they were not able to control its magic. He gave Lupin a short nod to indicate he was ready. Lupin opened the door of the closet.

And out came... Dumbledore.

"Mister Prevost! What do YOU think you are doing? Did you actually think a simple muggle as yourself could perform even the simplest of spells? Don't make me laugh."

Dom took a few steps back as the elderly mage continued mocking him, his lips were trembling ever so slightly. Lupin noticed the troubles Dom was having and with a shout he attracted the attention of the boggard. The magical creature immediately turned into a small full moon. Lupin waved his wand and made the shining ball of light enter the closet once more before shutting the door and walking over to Dom. The teen looked slightly embarrassed and flustered over what just happened.

"I see... I see. I do believe we need to work a bit more on your magic Dom. Don't worry. This was just a first try."

He patted the teen on the shoulder and turned to J.P, simply nodding towards the door. J.P swallowed and nodded, heading towards the do. Lupin waved his wand and the door flew open.

What emerged seemed to be taken directly from a nightmare. A humanoid creature moved out of the closet, its skin covered with hundreds and hundreds of needles of different length and thickness. The creature groaned and headed towards J.P, stretching out a hand that was covered with needles.

J.P seemed quite scared of the creature but he had enough presence of mind to lift his wand and shout the magical formula at the creature.

*CRACK*

The creature was suddenly covered in corks, each cork covering the needles on its skin, making it completely harmless. This caused the laughter of all the four friend.

Lupin made signs for Nicolas to step ahead.

The boggard sensed a new presence and turned toward Nicolas.

*CRACK*

The cork covered creature turned into a rather short and stocky man. He had an abundant moustache and eyes so dark that they almost seemed completely black. His skin was slightly darker than that of Nicolas and his hair was grey and starting to disappear, yet there was a familiar resemblance that gave away the family link between Nicolas and the apparition. 

"Son, I am very disappointed of you."

Nicolas seemed to deflate slightly at the words of the apparition, but it didn't last for long. He whipped up his wand and shouted out the counterspell.

*CRACK*

The man was suddenly completely covered in duct tape, resembling a mummy, only the black eyes visible between two strips of tape. Lupin smiled quite pleased at the results and nodded to Anita.

The girl took a short step towards the boggard. The creature noticing her immediately. The change didn't occur... Instead the creature somehow managed to crawl back into the darkness of the closet.

Lupin was puzzled, he had never seen or heard about a boggard escaping from anyone. He nodded to Anita and the girl approached the closet. Only to scream and almost fall back as the darkness of the closet was lit up by what seemed like the headlights of a truck speeding out of the small side room.

Lupin reacted swiftly and whipped out his wand, making the door slam shut before the boggard could escape.

He turned toward Anita that was sitting on the floor in the far corner of the room, crying in silence. She was hugging her legs to her chest and hiding her face against her knees. Lupin walked over to her side and whispered something in her ears that the other three friends couldn't hear. The girl simply shook her head and continued crying. Lupin waved Dom over and asked him to stay with Anita until she had managed to calm down. For a moment he questioned himself. Had it been right of him to introduce them to such a magical creature on their first real DADA class?

Dom and Anita had not been able to utter the counterspell when the boggard had approached them. But J.P and Nicolas showed little problems in mastering the spell. Lupin sighed. Some times it was not easy to be a teacher. He made Dom repeat his encounter with the boogard and this time the teen managed to perform the spell, the mouth of Dumbledore being replaced with a closed zipper.

Anita, however, refused to even try again. She was still sitting in the far end of the room, her face slightly greenish as if she was feeling sick. Lupin trued to get her to tell him what was wrong, but the girl simply refused to speak, shaking her head at every question he asked her.

Slightly frustrated he continued the next part of the lesson, about the Red Caps. All four of the Hooligans taking notes about the small creatures that could be found wherever there had been bloodshed.

As the class ended Lupin asked Dom and J.P to stay behind, asking Anita and Nicolas to wait outside. The teacher was quite grim-faced when he turned to the students, his arms folded over his chest.

"There are two things I need to know. Both of them are about you friends. I know I should ask them directly about it but I would probably get no answer.

First of all, could any of you explain why Anita's boggard turned into two floating lights? I am not familiar with the muggle world, but that looked quite like the headlights of a truck.

And second, why didn't any of you tell me that Nicolas' father was a wizard?"

Both Dom and J.P seemed astonished with the second statement. Nicolas' father was a wizard? That was something that none of them would ever had suspected. Both of them shook their head, too suprised to actually utter a word about the matter. Lupin saw their expressions and realised that they didn't know any more than he did about the matter. He decided to ask Dumbledore before prying anymore.

But then there was the matter of Anita. The girl had seemed scared out of her wits as she saw the approaching headlights, there had to be some plausible reason for her behaviour, he inquired once more.

Dom remained in silence but J.P answered the question of the teacher.

"Anita's father was killed in a automobilistic accident. Anita was with him in the car when the truck hit them. But the strength from the impact somehow catapulted her out of the car, saving her life.

She was only nine years old when it all happened."

Lupin suddenly went serious. This was a matter of great concern. The girl was obviously traumatised by the death of her father, a mental barrier had broke as she saw the boggard, she had relived the moment of the accident. He shook his head slowly and dismissed J.P and Dom. Slowly Lupin moved over to the other side of the tower room. It would take time and patience to build up her confidence enough to face the boggard.

He sat down by his desk and pondered about the matters that had been revealed to him.

Outside the room Anita and Nicolas were waiting for their friends, Nicolas gently patting his friend on the shoulder to calm her down. The poor girl was still trembling slightly, but her face had recovered its normal colour. As Dom and J.P emerged from the room they immediately questioned them about what Lupin had wanted. Anita felt slightly annoyed at J.P for revealing something as personal as her past to the teacher, but she knew that one way or another it would be known. She sighed slightly and shook her head. How long would the past continue torturing her.

J.P and Dom stared at Nicolas, making him feel quite uneasy. The tall teen fidgeted as he felt himself being almost glared at.

"What?"

He inquired at his two friends that were still eyeing him in a quite little friendly way.

Dom was the first one to speak, and unlike his usual playful tone his voice was slightly snappy as he questioned Nicolas, looking at him as he really didn't know him.

"Why did you keep it a secret?"

Nicolas looked at Dom, not understanding what his friend meant. J.P saw Nicolas' confusion and stepped in front of Dom, his voice was calm as ever as he spoke.

"You could have told us, Colas. We would have kept the fact that your father is a wizard, secret."

Both Anita and Nicolas looked like they had just been drenched in a bucket of ice-cold water. The news could not have been more suprising. The father of Nicolas, a wizard? The thought was almost too ridiculous. Nicolas' father was as muggle as a muggle could be. 

They both shook their head slowly. Nicolas barely finding his voice to answer the inquiry of his friends.

"I... I honestly had no idea my father was a wizard. I promise you... I really didn't know!"

The four friends suddenly felt extremely confused. Could it be that all four of them carried wizard blood in their veins? This was something they would have to investigate further.

Chatting excitedly they started walking down the steps leading away from the tower, all four of them completely decided to find out as much as possible about their respective families.

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End chapter nine

Oh yes. Anita has a secret admirer, who could it be?

And finally there is some light cast over the fact that our friends actually got magical powers after a life of being muggles.

There are still many suprises waiting in the next chapters.

Thanks for your patience.

Any reviews will be apreciated.


	10. Snakes and Ravens

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters you may recognise from the book. All of them belong to that wonderful writer J.K Rowlings. 

Dom, Nicolas, J.P and Anita are all real people that are really enjoying being in my story.

I have created any creature and person you don't recognise from the books.

This story takes place after the publishing of The Prisoner of Azkaban, and the release of the second Harry Potter movie.

Harry is in his fourth year at Hogwarts.

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Chapter ten: Snakes and Ravens.

The last meal of the day was a silent one. The four friends were pondering about what they had just discovered. That Nicolas' father was actually a wizard, that he had been hiding the fact from his family. Nicolas was feeling betrayed, so that was why his father had always been telling him what a disappointment he was to him. He had been a squib, a shame for his father. And he had never even known, his father had never told him anything about the magical world. Nicolas' father was strict, serious and quite a silent man, but he had never thought of him to be someone to hide his true identity to his family. Nicolas caught himself wondering if his mother knew the true nature of her husband, if she knew that he was a wizard. 

*No...Mother can't possibly know. That means he has kept this a secret for all of us. How could he?!*

The tall teen stared into his plate, for once not devouring his meal as if it was his last. He was feeling cheated, betrayed by someone he held in great esteem. J.P and Dom sensed the sadness of their friend, but knew him well enough to let him sort out his own feelings before they tried comforting him. 

The other students that had made the Hooligans their friends also seemed to sense this change in attitude and strayed away from them. All of them except Harry. He had been observing Anita as she was seated slightly away from her friends. She had a expression in her green eyes that reminded him of the expression his own eyes held when he remembered his parents. A look of loss so deep that it could make anyone's heart ache by simply gazing into them. Harry was not good to speak with girls...well if you didn't count Hermione and Ginny...and he hardly knew anything about Anita, but he decided to give it a try.

He walked over to her and took a seat by her in silence. Anita looked up at him and smiled slightly, her green eyes shining behind her glasses. Harry had to admit that she was rather pretty.

He found himself wondering what they could actually talk about... and without thinking too much about it he spoke about the first thing that stumbled into his mind....Quidditch

"George and Fred told me you are going to join us in a Quidditch match next weekend. That will be great. I am really eager to see you fly."

Anita cheered up slightly at the mention of flying, she had always wanted to fly. And now she actually could. She smiled at Harry and pushed her glasses further up on her nose.

"Well, I don't know if I´ll be able to fly. I have never done it before."

Harry suddenly remembered that she used to be a muggle, and that the closest thing she must have been to flying was travelling in a aeroplane from Canada to England. He was amazed how eager he felt a the thought of teaching her to fly on her broom.

"Oh it's really nothing to it. Its quite easy...well I think it's easy. What brand of broom do you have?"

The girl smiled, her gloominess disappearing in the eagerness of the talk. 

"I don't think you have heard of it... its called WhirlWind. The man at the Quidditch Supply store told me it was from the same fabric that made the Silver Arrow. It looks like a quality broom to me, the shaft is nice and smooth, and the twigs are all even."

Harry had to smile, it seemed he had found someone that loved Quidditch as much as himself and Ron, and to make it even better... it was a pretty girl. The two of them continued discussing the different brooms during the rest of the supper, none noticing the strange glances they were getting both from Dom and J.P.

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Supper was over and the small recess before bedtime went on like always. The four friends were together and discussing the events of the day. But today they clearly were avoiding the subject that was puzzling all of them. The matter with Nicolas' father. 

The Hooligans had decided to keep the matter a secret until they could find out some more. And for the first time Nicolas was starting to doubt his father. He told the rest of his friends that he would owl his father as son as possible. J.P was kind enough to offer him to use Merlin for the delivery.

Soon enough the bell indicated that it was time for the students to return to the castle as night was getting darker. The four friends bid eachother good night in the stairway, Dom and Nicolas heading down to the dungeons and their houses. Anita and J.P walked up the staircase toward theirs.

Dom yawned as he reached the door to the Slytherin house. He was tired and ready for a good night of sleep. He muttered the password and moved into the room. Not a soul was in the common room so he headed straight for the dormitory. He saw a form in Ian's bed and supposed that the younger wizard was already sleeping. Gently he picked Oddball out of his pocket and placed him on the bed, the rat scurried around on his pillow a few times before curling up in one corner and promptly falling asleep.

Dom chuckled at the antics of the rat before he slowly started disrobing himself to get into his pyjamas. He had but pulled the robe over his head and rid himself with his shirt when he felt someone moving in from behind. He was about to whirl around when a meaty fist hit him on the spot above his kidney. 

The pain was horrible, causing him to fall to his knees by Ian's bed. He grabbed a hold of the bedside to get to his feet and stared into the petrified face of his friend. Someone had cast a petrifying spell on the boy, then left him in the bed.

Dom could feel his kidney throbbing in pain as he slowly got to his feet and turned around. He was not at all suprised to see Draco and Goyle both smirking at him. He also noticed, to his great dismay, that Goyle was holding his wand in his fat and meaty hand.

Dom opened his mouth to shout for help when Draco almost carelessly flicked his wand. His blue eyes cold and icy. 

"Abigo!"

Draco smirked at Dom as the gangly teenager was thrown hard against the wall, the banishing spell having hit him square in the chest. The blonde wizard walked to stand close to where Goyle was waiting and spoke in a snotty voice.

"Not so brave now, are you? Muggle."

Dom glared at Draco, his dark brown eyes moving to the hand of Goyle, staring at his wand. He felt totally powerless without it. But he wouldn't let the slimy snake win. His eyes moved back to look at Draco, hate glowing within them. Dom spoke with the most insulting tone of voice he could. Straightening up and placing his hands crossed over his chest, his lips drawn back in a sneer.

"I should be the one to ask that question, Malfoy... Are you feeling very brave now the you have me cornered and wandless?

Is this what your death eater father teaches you? Is this how he kills innocent people for Voldemort?"

Draco cringed at the mention of the dark lord, his light blue eyes glowing with spite as he spoke back to Dom.

"Don't you dare to talk about my father like that."

He nodded at Goyle who moved forward with a speed that seemed strange for someone of his bulk. Without a word the huge teen slammed his fist into Dom's unprotected stomach, causing the tall and gangly teen to double over in pain.

Dom struggled to regain his breath as he slowly straightened himself and moved away from Goyle. The meat mountain seemed to be waiting for more orders from Draco. The blonde teen smirked at Dom as he walked over to grab Dom by the chin, forcing him to look into the cold blue eyes.

"That...was for the Clusum spell."

He let go of Dom and started walking towards the other end of the dormitory, his robes fluttering behind him.

"Your girlfriend will pay for the Calvum spell."

Dom blinked several times...Girlfriend? He had no girlfriend. What was Draco talking about? Had the blonde finally lost his marbles?

While he pondered Goyle saw his chance to throw Dom's wand toward the fireplace, hoping it would land in the flames. But the throw didn't go true and the wand simply fell to the floor several feet away from the flames. Afraid Dom could grab the wand and hex him Goyle ran out of the dormitory following Draco.

Dom glared after the two, still trying to figure out who they meant when referring to his girlfriend. Then it suddenly dawned on him, his face loosing all colour. Crabbe had not been there! His eyes went wide openin fear as he stared towards the door where Draco had dissapeared. He barely noticed that Ian was slowly starting to stir and whimper in his bed. But the could wait.... Right now there was just one person that was on Dom's mind.

Anita.

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"Perspicientia"

The door to the Ravenclaw common room opened and let the chattering group of girls in. Fiona and Kat were trying to cheer up Anita as much as they could, but for once the teen didn't react to the jokes of her friends. Orla was walking in silence by the older girls, being only eleven years old she didn't have any interest in chattering about boys as the conversation turned to the second anonymous note Anita had received. Once more there was only one phrase written on the parchment, and once more it was in a handwriting Anita didn't recognise. This time the note read:

I really like you.

But even this was not enough to distract Anita from her gloomy thoughts, the encounter with the boggart had left her mind spinning. Memories that she had pushed into the back of her mind now returned to her full force. She could easily remember the fear she had felt when she saw the approaching headlights, and the surge of nausea that had followed once the boggart had been returned to the closet. She had a slight headache and even the chattering voice of her friends wee annoying her. She excused herself and told the girls that she needed to use the bathroom. Turned on her heels and marched out of the common room, followed by Devlin.

Fiona, Kat and Orla only stared after her, wondering what they had said to offend their friend.

The girls room in the northern tower was one stair away from the door to the Ravenclaw common room, and it was a quick walk. But Anita strolled as slowly as she could. She wished she was at home. In her own room where she could turn up the music, lock the door and just be alone. She knew that when she felt this kind of sadness she would only feel worse in someone else's company. She sighed and sat down on the stair, patting Devlin that had placed his head in her lap and was looking up at her with his dark brown eyes.

"Oh Devi...what should I do? I really thought I would be able to forget everything about it but I can't."

She sighed deeply, struggling to keep back the tears that were stinging in her eyes. The small crup heard her voice and tilted his head, listening to her. He whined slightly and bumped her hand with his head. As if he wanted to tell her that he was still there for her.

Anita smiled and picked up the small animal, hugging him close to her chest, digging her nose into his fur. At least Devlin listened to her without trying to cheer her up. She hated when people tried to cheer her up when she was sad. It was strange, but sometimes she rather preferred solitude to the company of others... even her friends..

Her train of thought was abruptly stopped when she felt Devlin stiffen up in her arms, growling softly. She let go of the crup that jumped to the floor, snarling at something.

Anita got up and whipped out her wand. There was a large figure hidden in the shadows. She swallowed several times. Devlin had started to growl louder, the hairs on his back standing straight up. She swallowed once more before calling out in a voice that didn't seem all that confident.

"Who is there?"

No answer came from the figure, instead it started moving toward her. She was about to cast a hex when Devlin launched himself toward the figure, fiercely defending him master. The crup barked loudly as it reached the figure then sank its teeth into a fat and meaty ankle.

Crabbe screamed out in pain as Devlin bit him, blood seeping out trough his sock. He shook his leg several times until he managed to detatch the small animal. Then, without any mercy, he kicked the crup straight in the head. Devlin yelped and fell to the floor, completely unmoving. The Slythering student then turned and started running down the stairs.

By then Anita had managed to gather her senses and than thrown a lumos spell, revealing the identity of the fleeing shadow. She started screaming on the top of her lungs, her shrieks echoing in the tower, and calling on the attention of both Ravenclaw students and of the diminutive Professor Flitwick. 

The students poured out from the common room as Professor Flitwick, dressed in a old fashion flannel night-shirt, complete with a striped night cap that seemed to be just about to slide off his head, his white hair standing straight in all directions. In his hand was his wand, shinning in the dark like a candle.

"What is this? What is all the fuss about?"

He said in a tone that did little to calm the students that were all crowding around Anita. The girl had moved over where her pet was, petting the unmoving crup. Only the slight movement of the forked tail showed that there was life in the animal. Blood was running from its mouth, and its jaw seemed out of place, maybe broken. Anita was still crying, but her voice was cold as ice when she answered the question of Flitwick.

"It was Crabbe, a student from Slytherin. He was hiding in the shadows behind the pillar. I am almost completely certain he was waiting for me."

Professor Flitwick made his way trough the crowd of students, this only making his night cap getting more crooked on his head, and stood by Anita, looking down at the wounded crup. The teacher seemed angry and shocked over the fact that someone could hurt an animal like this. He was a peaceful man and abhorred this kind of violence. He gently placed a hand on Anita's shoulder, as she was kneeling he was almost even height with the teen, and spoke in a low and consoling voice.

"He will be fine dear. You'll have to take him to Hagrid immediately I'm afraid.

I´ll speak to Professor Snape about this incident in the morning. In the meanwhile I will accompany you so you can leave your crup with Hagrid."

He then turned to the rest of the students, his voice suddenly more authoritary than it had ever been. The small teacher seemed to grow to twice his size as he spoke. Most of the students, even those of fifth and sixth year had never seen their house head this serious.

"The rest of you...To bed! Right away!"

There was no protests from the students as they slowly started returning to their respective dormitories, some of them, specially Kat, Fiona and Orla, lingered a bit more. They wanted to know if their friend was going to be alright. But Professor Flitwick quickly shooed them back to their common room.

In the meanwhile Anita had gently picked up Devlin. The body of the crup seemed so small in her arms. Blood was slowly staining her hands, but she didn't mind. All she cared about now was to get Devlin to Hagrid, so the gamekeeper could heal him.

She turned and looked at Flitwick who returned the gaze with a nod. Slowly, student and teacher, started moving down the stairs, none of them speaking for the moment, bot worried about Devlin.

Fortunately for them Hagrid was not sleeping yet. The inmense man recieved them in his hut and quickly looked over Devlin, shaking his head slightly as he ran his fingers over the jaw of the animal, causing the crup to whimper in pain.

He turned to look at Anita and Flitwick, speaking in that low yet comforting voice of his. His hand was moving to tug gently at his beard as he spoke.

" He's got a broken jaw bone, whoever did this gave him quite a strong kick.

But don't you worry little Miss I´ll mend him good. I´ll have to ask Madam Pomfrey for some of her Skele-Grow but you'll see, he'll be up and around in no time."

Anita nodded in silence, looking at the unmoving form of Devlin. She trusted Hagrid to heal her pet. But she was angry. No, angry was not the word, she was completely furious, red hot rage boiling inside her intestines and gnawing on her. 

As they walked back toward the north tower Anita promised herself that Draco would pay dearly for what he had done to Devlin. Her eyebrows knitted together in a deep frown. Professor Flitwick noticed the angry expression on her face but he thought it would be better for her to sort out her feelings for herself.

As they reached the tower Anita thanked the teacher and returned to the girl's dormitory, avoiding to speak to any of her friends.

As she got to bed she looked at the spot where Devlin used to sleep and cursed silently to herself.

If it was war Draco wanted... then war he would get.

-------------------------------------------------- o---------------------------------------------------------

End chapter ten

So sorry for the long waiting time. But my life has been incredibly busy of lately.

Besides I have been in a bit of a writers block. NEVER work on 4 different novels at the same time.. Its just confusing for your neurones.

Sorry for the spelling mistake in prior chapters. My computer is configured to Spanish and I honestly had no idea I could configure Word to actually do spell checks in English. I do hope this makes my story a little less filled with typos.

Until next time

Ta ta!

Abigo = Banish


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